Mass diffusion cloaking and focusing with metamaterials

Recent advances in the design of metamaterials that control diffusive transport processes have enabled efficient devices to manipulate heat conduction. In contrast, control of mass diffusion with metamaterial devices has been largely unexplored. Mass diffusion is critically important in multiple research areas ranging from electronic and energy materials to chemical and biological systems. In this work, we introduce a physical approach to design mass diffusion metamaterial devices that take into account the fundamental physical mechanisms behind mass transport. We demonstrate that mass concentration discontinuities arising from different material solubilities are critical physical factors that need to be incorporated for the accurate design and characterization of mass diffusion metamaterial devices. We employ our approach to devise and analyze cloaking and focusing of molecules and show how the difference in solubilities is critically important for the efficiency of the metamaterials. This work provides physical insights and guidelines to understand and design mass diffusion in metamaterial devices.