Experimental demonstration of transmission enhancement through subwavelength apertures at microwave frequencies

Abstract

Metamaterials are artificial materials with novel electromagnetic characteristics. They are used in many applications including imaging, super lenses, cloaking, transmission enhancement, beaming and recently in nano applications. One of the major building blocks is the split ring resonators (SRR). We can construct metamaterials by using a single or an array of the SRRs. In this thesis, enhanced transmission through subwavelength apertures, which is one of the applications of metamaterials, is obtained by using various split ring resonators configurations. We demonstrated transmission enhancement with Connected Split Ring Resonators (CSRRs), Omega-like Split Ring Resonators and Stack-like Split Ring Resonators through circular and rectangular subwavelength apertures experimentally and numerically at the microwave frequencies. We report the highest experimental transmission enhancement results in the literature so far. Besides high factors, we also obtained multi-peak resonant characteristics with Stack-like SRR designs. Furthermore, we analyzed these various SRR samples numerically in order to understand the resonance behavior. We also discuss the effects of shorting the loops, omitting the components of the SRRs and aperture geometry to the resonance frequency. Finally, we applied Tight Binding methods to analyze the multi-peak characteristics of the Stack-like SRR design.