  Diffusion driven by temperature or concentration gradients is a fundamental
mechanism of energy and mass transport, which inherently differs from wave
propagation in both physical foundations and application prospects. Compared
with conventional schemes, metamaterials provide an unprecedented potential for
governing diffusion processes, based on emerging theories like the
transformation and the scattering cancellation theory, which enormously
expanded the original concepts and suggest innovative metamaterial-based
devices. We hereby use the term "diffusionics" to generalize these remarkable
achievements in various energy (e.g., heat) and mass (e.g., particles and
plasmas) diffusion systems. For clarity, we categorize the numerous studies
appeared during the last decade by diffusion field (i.e., heat, particles, and
plasmas) and discuss them from three different perspectives: the theoretical
perspective, to detail how the transformation principle is applied to each
diffusion field; the application perspective, to introduce various intriguing
metamaterial-based devices, such as cloaks and radiative coolers; and the
physics perspective, to connect with concepts of recent concern, such as
non-Hermitian topology, nonreciprocal transport, and spatiotemporal modulation.
We also discuss the possibility of controlling diffusion processes beyond
metamaterials. Finally, we point out several future directions for diffusion
metamaterial research, including the integration with artificial intelligence
and topology concepts.
