A comprehensive review of metamaterials and metasurfaces for wireless power transfer (WPT) and wireless energy harvesting (WEH) is presented in this article. According to the features of the electromagnetic field from the source to the receiver, WPT is divided into nonradiative near-field technology and radiative (near and far-field) technologies. Many different and important designs are reviewed and compared. It is shown that metamaterials and metasurfaces can significantly improve the power transfer efficiency and operational distance for WPT systems. They can also improve the energy conversion efficiency of wireless energy harvesters by making the reception less sensitive to incident wave angle and polarization. A rectenna is a critical element for both WPT and WEH. It is shown that metamaterial-based rectennas can achieve a higher RF to dc conversion efficiency. Furthermore, metamaterials can also be used as either parasitic elements or loading components to improve WEH performance in terms of circuit size, beamwidth, and conversion efficiency. Future development directions and opportunities of metamaterials and metasurfaces for WPT and WEH are also proposed in this article.

An adaptively smart wireless power transfer (WPT) system is proposed by using a 2-bit programmable metasurface (PMS), in which an indoor dynamic charging application scenario is described and near-field focused (NFF) technique is adopted to transmit wireless powers. Theoretical analyses of NFF PMS are presented to illustrate its WPT capabilities. To implement dynamic WPTs, digital phase-shift quantization of PMS element is investigated, indicating that 2-bit quantization scheme is a preferred solution. As experimental demonstrations, a 2-bit 12 × 12 PMS operating at 5.8 GHz is designed, fabricated, and tested. High-power focal spots that can be regulated to focus at different near-field positions are measured in an anechoic chamber. We conduct multiple WPT experiments by using the 2-bit PMS as the transmitter and a 4 × 4 microstrip array antenna as the receiver. Experimental results show that the proposed 2-bit PMS can continuously transmit the wireless powers to the receiver even though the target is moving, and the WPT efficiency is maintained over 9.1%, which has about 16.3 dB improvement at the end of the trajectory compared to the fixed NFF beam. This work is one of the first attempts to thoroughly examine the possibility of the dynamic WPTs using PMS, offering a brand-new manner for the adaptively smart WPT systems.

A novel direction of arrival (DoA) estimation method based on amplifier-integrated active metasurface is proposed to find multisource directions by a single-channel system. Nonuniformly periodic time modulation (NPTM) on the metasurface reduces the hardware complexity by taking full advantage of the spectral resources. As a result, only partial metasurface elements are required to achieve 2-D DoA estimation, while the remaining elements can be redesigned and encoded to control electromagnetic waves. Thus, adaptive beamsteering can be expected to realize in a full-duplex way. Moreover, the amplifiers in the metasurface can function as modulation units to generate the required harmonics and enhance signal quality. The nonideality of the modulated square wave due to the active devices is allowed without affecting the estimation accuracy. An active metasurface prototype composed of 5 $\times$ 5 elements is fabricated and measured in the microwave anechoic chamber for multisource direction finding. The measured maximum error is 0.31 $^{\circ}$ , which is high accuracy compared with the state-of-the-art works. Thus, the proposed method has application values in the Internet of Things (IoT), wireless communications, and radar.

A reconfigurable folded transmitarray antenna (RFTA) with fully planar structure is presented in this letter. It consists of an electronically reconfigurable metasurface and a polarization rotating metasurface (PRMS). A pair of PIN diode switches are integrated on the reconfigurable meta-atom to realize the 1-bit transmission phase manipulating, and a patch antenna is integrated on the center of the PRMS to feed the RFTA. Through twice reflecting, polarization rotating and transmission phase compensation, the spherical wave from the feed is transformed into the scannable pencil-shaped beam. Meanwhile, the antenna profile is reduced to about 1/3 compared to the traditional reconfigurable transmitarray antenna (RTA). The RFTA prototype with 12×12 elements is designed, fabricated and measured. Experimental results show that the gain of 13.4 dBi at 5.8 GHz is obtained and the two-dimensional beam scanning angle covers ±60°. This work significantly reduces the profile of traditional RTA, making it a promising candidate for the wireless communication system with limited space.

In the last two decades, metamaterials and metasurfaces have introduced many new electromagnetic (EM) theory concepts and inspired contemporary design methodologies for EM devices and systems. This review focuses on the recent advances in metamaterials (MMs) for simultaneous wireless information and power transmission (SWIPT) technology. In the increasingly complex EM world, digital coding and programmable metamaterials and metasurfaces have enabled commercial opportunities with a broad impact on wireless communications and wireless power transfer. In this review, we first introduce the potential technologies for SWIPT. Then, it is followed by a comprehensive survey of various research efforts on metamaterial‐based wireless information transmission (WIT), wireless power transmission (WPT), wireless energy harvesting (WEH) and SWIPT technologies. Finally, it is concluded with perspectives on the rapidly growing SWIPT requirement for 6G. This review is expected to provide researchers with insights into the trend and applications of metamaterial‐based SWIPT technologies to stimulate future research in this emerging domain.

Aiming at the critical problem of wireless power transfer (WPT) for the current growing number of wireless devices, the multitarget WPT system based on metasurface-holography multifocal beams and the design methods is investigated and analyzed in this article. As the propagator in near-field synthesis, a new field calculation formula is derived based on the Friis formula between the metasurface unit (MU) and the field point, which breaks the limitation of paraxial approximation and makes metasurface holography applicable in a wide-angle, long-distance, and nonplane space. Besides the phase response of MUs, the amplitude response is also introduced, which achieves the simultaneous amplitude–phase optimization of the metasurface to improve transmission efficiency. A metasurface with holography multifocal beams is first designed and engaged in forming a planar multitarget WPT system, which has been proven to radiate the designed multifocal beam and transfer power to each focal spot uniformly and efficiently after simulated, fabricated, and measured. To verify that the proposed method can achieve a near-field synthesis of multifocal beams in nonplane space over a wide angular range, a metasurface with 23-focus beam distribution on a spherical surface with an elevation angle from $-$ 60 $^{\circ}$ to 60 $^{\circ}$ , omnidirectional azimuth, and 66.67 $\uplambda $ radius is designed and simulated, which shows that the simulated radiation field distribution is in good agreement with the initial preset target field. This work demonstrates a feasible high-efficiency and long-distance WPT strategy for multiple targets in wide-angle and spatial scenarios.