Researchers at New York University have created gyromorphs, a novel metamaterial that blocks light from all directions more effectively than previous designs. This breakthrough addresses key limitations in quasicrystal-based structures and could enable faster, more efficient light-based computers. The findings appear in Physical Review Letters.
Photonic computing, which uses light instead of electrical currents to process information, promises greater efficiency and speed over traditional systems. However, controlling microscopic light streams on chips requires materials that prevent stray light interference from any angle, known as isotropic bandgap materials.
For decades, scientists have relied on quasicrystals—non-repeating structures proposed by physicists Paul Steinhardt and Dov Levine in the 1980s and observed by Dan Shechtman—for such applications. Yet, these materials either block light completely but only from limited directions or weaken it partially from all sides, falling short of ideal performance.
A team at New York University, led by assistant professor Stefano Martiniani of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and neural science, has now engineered gyromorphs to overcome these drawbacks. Gyromorphs are metamaterials whose properties stem from their architecture rather than chemical makeup, featuring a unique blend of liquid-like disorder and large-scale patterns.
"Gyromorphs are unlike any known structure in that their unique makeup gives rise to better isotropic bandgap materials than is possible with current approaches," Martiniani said.
The researchers developed an algorithm to generate these structures with 'correlated disorder'—a balance between order and randomness. "Think of trees in a forest—they grow at random positions, but not completely random because they're usually a certain distance from one another," Martiniani explained. This approach revealed gyromorphs' ability to form impenetrable bandgaps for light waves.
Lead author Mathias Casiulis, a postdoctoral fellow in NYU's physics department, noted: "We wanted to make this structural signature as pronounced as possible. The result was a new class of materials—gyromorphs—that reconcile seemingly incompatible features. This is because gyromorphs don't have a fixed, repeating structure like a crystal, which gives them a liquid-like disorder, but, at the same time, if you look at them from a distance they form regular patterns."
The study, co-authored by graduate student Aaron Shih, was supported by the Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry (grant 839534) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-25-1-0359). Published in Physical Review Letters (2025; volume 135, issue 19; DOI: 10.1103/gqrx-7mn2), the work opens new paths for photonic chip design.