Metasurfaces are ultrathin metamaterials constructed by planar meta-atoms with tailored electromagnetic responses. They have attracted tremendous attention owing to their ability to freely control the propagation of electromagnetic waves. With active elements incorporated into metasurface designs, one can realize tunable and reconfigurable metadevices with functionalities controlled by external stimuli, opening up a new platform to dynamically manipulate electromagnetic waves. In this article, we review the recent progress on tunable and reconfigurable metasurfaces, focusing on their operation principles and practical applications. We describe the approaches to the engineering of reconfigurable metasurfaces categorized into different classes based on the available active materials or elements, which can offer uniform manipulations of electromagnetic waves. We further summarize the recent achievements on programmable metasurfaces with constitutional meta-atoms locally tuned by external stimuli, which can dynamically control the wavefronts of electromagnetic waves. Finally, we discuss time-modulated metasurfaces, which are meaningful to exploit the temporal dimension by applying a dynamic switching of the coding sequence. The review is concluded by our outlook on possible future directions and existing challenges in this fast developing field.

Controlling energy flow in waveguides has attractive potential in integrated devices from radio frequencies to optical bands. Due to the spin-orbit coupling, the mirror symmetry will be broken, and the handedness of the near-field source will determine the direction of energy transport. Compared with well-established theories about spin-momentum locking, experimental visualization of unidirectional coupling is usually challenging due to the lack of generic chiral sources and the strict environmental requirement. In this work, we design a broadband near-field chiral source in the microwave band and discuss experimental details to visualize spin-momentum locking in three different metamaterial waveguides, including spoof surface plasmon polaritons, line waves, and valley topological insulators. The similarity of these edge waves relies on the abrupt sign change of intrinsic characteristics of two media across the interface. In addition to the development of experimental technology, the advantages and research status of interface waveguides are summarized, and perspectives on future research are presented to explore an avenue for designing controllable spin-sorting devices in the microwave band.

Metasurfaces have enabled the realization of several optical functionalities over an ultrathin platform, fostering the exciting field of flat optics. Traditional metasurfaces are achieved by arranging a layout of static meta-atoms to imprint a desired operation on the impinging wavefront, but their functionality cannot be altered. Reconfigurability and programmability of metasurfaces are the next important step to broaden their impact, adding customized on-demand functionality in which each meta-atom can be individually reprogrammed. We demonstrate a mechanical metasurface platform with controllable rotation at the meta-atom level, which can implement continuous Pancharatnam–Berry phase control of circularly polarized microwaves. As the proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrate metalensing, focused vortex beam generation, and holographic imaging in the same metasurface template, exhibiting versatility and superior performance. Such dynamic control of electromagnetic waves using a single, low-cost metasurface paves an avenue towards practical applications, driving the field of reprogrammable intelligent metasurfaces for a variety of applications.

We introduce a geometrically reconfigurable metasurface whose artificial “atoms” will reorient within unit cells in response to a thermal stimulus in the microwave spectrum. It can alternate between two contrasting behaviors under different temperatures and serve as a switchable filter that allows the incident energy to be selectively transmitted or reflected with an excess of 10 dB isolation at certain frequencies for both polarizations. The experimental results are consistent with the theoretical simulations, verifying the availability of an innovative method for manipulating electromagnetic waves with the merits of higher controllability for dynamic behavior and greater flexibility in the design process.

We propose and demonstrate an agile X-band signal synthesizer with ultralow phase noise based on all-fiber-photonic techniques for radar applications. It shows phase noise of ?145dBc/Hz (?152dBc/Hz) at 10 kHz (100 kHz) offset frequency for 10 GHz carrier frequency with integrated RMS timing jitter between 7.6 and 9.1 fs (integration bandwidth: 10 Hz–10 MHz) for frequencies from 9 to 11 GHz. Its frequency switching time is evaluated to be 135 ns with a 135 pHz frequency tuning resolution. In addition, the X-band linear-frequency-modulated signal generated by the proposed synthesizer shows a good pulse compression ratio approximating the theoretical value. In addition to the ultrastable X-band signals, the proposed synthesizer can also provide 0–1 GHz ultralow-jitter clocks for analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC) in radar systems and ultralow-jitter optical pulse trains for photonic ADC in photonic radar systems. The proposed X-band synthesizer shows great performance in phase stability, switching speed, and modulation capability with robustness and potential low cost, which is enabled by an all-fiber-photonics platform and can be a compelling technology suitable for future X-band radars.

In order to improve the precision of the laser–radio-frequency (RF) synchronization system from sub-picosecond to femtosecond (fs), a synchronization system between a picosecond laser and a 1.3 GHz RF generator has been developed based on a fiber-loop optical-microwave phase detector (FLOM-PD). Synchronization with fs-level (3.8 fs) rms jitter, integrated from 10 Hz to 1 MHz, is achieved for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, in this kind of configuration. This system will be used for the superconducting RF accelerator at Peking University.

We introduce a nanoscale photonic platform based on gallium phosphide. Owing to the favorable material properties, peak power intensity levels of 50 GW/cm2 are safely reached in a suspended membrane. Consequently, the field enhancement is exploited to a far greater extent to achieve efficient and strong light–matter interaction. As an example, parametric interactions are shown to reach a deeply nonlinear regime, revealing cascaded four-wave mixing leading to comb generation and high-order soliton dynamics.

As a consequence of Kramers–Kronig relations, the wavelength-dependent behavior of the metasurface is one of the critical limitations in existing metasurface structures, which reduces the design freedom among different wavelengths. Here, we present an approach to construct a high-efficiency multi-wavelength metasurface with independent phase control by coding different wavelengths into orthogonal polarizations. As proof of the concept, two dual-band metasurfaces have been proposed and numerically demonstrated by multiple vortex beam generation in near-field and polarization multiplexing achromatic beam deflection. Furthermore, simulated results show that the proposed metasurface exhibits high transmission efficiency at both wavelengths, which may find widespread applications in subwavelength electromagnetics.