Metamaterials (meta means beyond in Greek) are new artificial materials with unusual electromagnetic properties that are

not found in naturally occurring materials. All natural materials such as glass, diamond and such have positive electrical permittivity, magnetic permeability and an index of refraction. In these new artificially fabricated materialstermed as negative index materials (NIM) or double negative (DNG) media or left handed (LH) materials or backward wave (BW) mediaall these material parameters are negative. With these unusual material parameters, new kinds of miniaturized antennas and microwave components/devices can be created for the wireless communications and the A brief intro d e f e n s e industries. In optics, every lens made has been limited by the wavelength of the light it uses to focus until now. With metamaterials, a super lens that can focus on features smaller than the wavelength of the light itself should be possible. This possibility opens up sub-wavelength magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for medical applications such as increased resolution to observe tiny cancerous cells. MRI systems employ coils to intercept the radio frequency (RF) magnetic flux from regions of interest deep within the body. Using metamaterials offers novel possibilities of guiding RF flux to the receiver coil, permitting a clear image to be obtained where none might be detectable otherwise. The electrical permittivity (response to an electric field) and the magnetic permeability (response to a magnetic field) are the main determinants of a materials response to electromagnetic (EM) waves. In metamaterials, both these material parameters are negative. Correspondingly, the refractive index of the metamaterials is also negative since the refractive index n = -. Hence, light bends the wrong way when it enters from a vacuum to the metamaterials as illustrated in Fig. 1. Usually, light bends toward the normal (normal to the interface as shown by the dotted line in Fig. 1) when it enters from a rarer medium to a denser medium. But for metamaterials, light bends away from the normal. An immediate outcome of negative and in metamaterials is that when we

change the sign of and in the four Maxwells equations, we get a lefthanded triplet of electric field E, magnetic field H and phase vector k. For normal materials, it is a right-handed triplet. This implies the phase vector k and the group velocity or Poynting vector S are in the opposite direction

Background on construction
Russian physicist, Victor Veselago, theoretically proposed Metamaterials in 1968. He had theoretically investigated the electrodynamics of substances with simultaneously negative values of dielectric constant () and magnetic permeability (). He had investigated how the electromagnetic (EM) waves would propagate in such materials and what would be their properties. However, experimental verifications of such materials with the simultaneously negative and did not occur until recently. In 1996, John B. Pendry et al proposed that a periodic array of copper wires with a specific radius and spacing produces an electromagnetic response of negative materials. Three years later, he further proposed that a periodic array of split ring resonators (SRRs) would have a frequency band where is negative. Now, let us consider how these metamaterials are created. The simplest way is to construct a periodic structure composed of pairs of elements, in which one element array produces a negative and the other element array produces a negative . Thus, David Smith et al envisaged that if they could somehow combine these two Pendry proposed artificial materials, the composite would be a metamaterial with both negative and , just as Veselago hypothesized over 30 years ago. So they started constructing such composite artificial materials and observed their material properties. The first metamaterial was fabricated by interleaving SRRs and copper wires. The experiment used a 2-D array of repeated unit cells of copper strips and split ring resonators (SRR) on interlocking strips of standard circuit board materials. The scattering angle measured from the transmitted beam through a prism fabricated from these metamaterial structures showed a frequency band with the index of refraction negative. In such metamaterials, an array of SRRs contributes to the negative ; the copper wire array contributes to the negative and the combined array results in a negative permeability and permittivity material. David

to metamaterials

Properties

for metamaterials. Thereby, the waves flow in a so-called backwards fashion (i.e. the wave phase appears to undulate backwards while the energy propagates along the incident in a forward direction). The direction of the phase velocity is specified by the phase vector k; whereas, the direction of propagation of the energy or the group velocity is indicated by the Poynting vector S. Another strange property of metamaterials is the reverse Doppler effect. It makes a train-whistle sound higher in pitch as it approaches and lower in pitch as it recedes. The possible application for such phenomenon is in mobile wireless communication and is still under investigation. Also, there is the reverse Cerenkov effect. This means a charged particle passing through a medium emits light from a cone behind the particle rather than in front of it as in normal materials. Cerenkov radiation occurs when a charged particle moves in a material with a speed faster than light. In particle physics, one possible application is constructing a Cerenkov detector to identify charged particles of various velocities.

Rakhesh S. Kshetrimayum

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Smith and his colleagues at UCSD reported the outcome in the 2001 April issue of Science. In July 2003, Richard W. Ziolkowski from the University of Arizona reported another metamaterial. This metamaterial comprised of a substrate with embedded capacitively loaded strips (CLSs) and square split ring resonators (SRRs). CLSs produce a strong dielectric-like response thereby contributing to the negative and the square SRRs give a strong magnetic material-like response that contributes to the negative . The combined composite structure of CLSs array and square SRRs array exhibits a frequency band where both the effective , are negative and, consequently, have a negative index of refraction. It has been reported that metamaterials can be designed, fabricated and tested with normal microwave engineering tools. These available fabrication techniques like clean room etching, shadow mask/etching, etc could be applied in many frequency bands. But right now the attention has been focused on the Radio Frequency (RF) to 100 GHz frequency range. This is because fabrication becomes more difficult and more costly as the wavelength involved gets shorter at the higher frequency.

evanescent spectrum constitutes the origin of diffraction limit. But, metamaterials based lens achieve perfect imaging by supporting as well the growing evanescent waves which restore, at the image plane, the decaying evanescent waves emanating from the source. Thereby, the lens resolution is greatly

dual-band inharmonic coupler, with the enhanced performance, have been proposed by Tatsou Itoh and others at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Controversy
Every new discovery or invention has

Normal Materials Air

Metamaterials

Super lens
The first possible applications of such artificially composed metamaterials are in optics due to their negative refractive index. John B. Pendry, a physicist at the Imperial College London, has claimed that lens made of metamaterials could focus light for objects less than wavelength in size to a geometric point. All lens utilizing natural materials known today cannot focus light onto an area smaller than the square wavelength of the light used to examine it (the diffraction limit). For instance, atoms are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Hence, they cannot be seen using optical microscopes. The EM field emanating from a line source consists of plane waves. Some of them are propagating while others are attenuating. They are called evanescent waves. A conventional lens can only focus the propagating waves. This results in the imperfect image of the object. The finer spatial details (smaller than a wavelength) of the object, carried by the evanescent waves, are lost due to the strong attenuation these waves experience when traveling from the object to the image. This loss of the

Fig. 1 Light bends the wrong way when it enhanced. Sub-wavelength resolution, or enters from the vacuum to the metamaterials focusing beyond the diffraction limit, is possible with a perfect, flat lens made controversy surrounding it. up of metamaterials. Thats why such Metamaterials are no exception. lens are also referred to as super lens. Prashant Valanju et al at the University George V. Eleftheriades from University of Texas at Austin claims that negative of Toronto reported in the 19 March refraction would violate the fundamen2004 issue of Physical Review Letters tal speed limit of light. But there have that it is possible to achieve /2 resolubeen quite a few experimental results tion using such kinds of super lens. Anything smaller than a wavelength of light such as atoms and molecules are out of reach for even the best available optical microscopes. But for such super lens one could literally see previously invisible objects like atoms.

Antennas and more

Another possible application is in the area of communications. It is possible to construct leaky-wave antennas with backward to forward scanning capability using such metamaterials. Conventional leaky-wave antennas have the drawbacks of scanning only the half-space, i.e. they only have forward scanning capability. Utilizing metamaterials, we also can have the backward scanning capability. If we combine the conventional and metamaterials based leaky-wave antennas, it is possible to construct backfire-to-end-fire leakywave antennas with the capability of scanning in all directions. Beside these examples, many researchers are trying to improve the performance of microwave, wireless communications, microelectronics and optical devices using these new metamaterials. For instance, a coupled-line coupler with arbitrary coupling, a compact enhanced-bandwidth hybrid ring, a
Air Metamaterials Air

Fig. 2 Perfect, flat lens focusing light to a geometric point for objects smaller than a wavelength

to support negative refraction as mentioned previously. With such mounting evidence, researchers around the world have started accepting this new artificial material with its unusual properties. Besides, many defense organizations, companies and research institutes are sponsoring research projects to explore such artificial metamaterials: structures, properties and applications. For instance, RF metamaterials has been started in the UK with the work of John B. Pendry at Imperial College in collaboration with Marconi Research. Most major US defense companies have a metamaterials program now. Boeing

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leads a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) consortium focusing on negative refraction in the GHz frequency range. There is a second DARPA consortium led by UCLA with a more academic focus. The European Union (EU) has funded a consortium under the Future and Emerging Technology program and many applications for substantial funds are in the pipeline. Seeing what the future holds for these wonderful new artificial materials means looking beyond just their negativity.

Read more about it:

Split Ring Resonator

Copper Wire

V. G. Veselago, Electrodynamics of substances with

Fig. 3 Photograph of a metamaterial (courtesy of David Smith, UCSD)

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simultaneously negative electrical and magnetic permeabilities, Soviet Physics Uspekhi, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 513, Jan.-Feb., 1968. R. A. Shelby, D. R. Smith and S. Schultz, Experimental verifications of a negative index of refraction, Science, vol. 292, pp. 77-79, 6 April 2001. J. B. Pendry, A. J. Holden, D. J. Robbins and W. J. Stewart, Magnetism from conductors and enhanced linear media, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 47, no. 11, pp. 2075-2084, Nov. 1999. http://physics.ucsd.edu/~drs/ left_home.htm http://www.metamaterials.net/ http://microlab.seas.ucla.edu/ MURI/MURI.html http://www.foresight.gov.uk/ servlet/Controller/ver=1928/2_2.htm P. M. Valanju, R. M. Walser and A. P. Valanju, Wave refraction in Negative Index Media is always positive and very inhomogeneous, Physical Review Letters, vol. 88, no. 18, 187401-1, 6 May 2002 A. K. Iyer and G. V. Eleftheriades, Negative refractive index metamaterials supporting 2-D waves, IEEE International Microwave Symposium Digest, pp. 1067-1070, June 2-7, 2002. C. Caloz and T. Itoh, Novel microwave devices and structures

based on the transmission line approach of meta-materials, IEEE International M i c r o w a v e Symposium Digest, pp. 195-198, June 7-13, 2003. R. W. Ziolkowski, Design, fabrication and testing of double negative metamaterials, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 51, no. 7, pp. 1516-1529, July 2003. A. Alu and N. Engheta, Pairing an epsilon-negative slab with a mu-negative Unit Cell slab: resonance, tunneling and transparency, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 2558-2571, Oct. 2003. S. A. Tretyakov, S. I. Maslovski and P. A. Belov, An analytical model of metamaterials based on loaded wire dipoles, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 2652-2658, Oct. 2003.

Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to his PhD supervisor Dr. Lei Zhu for introducing to this wonderful world of metamaterials. The author is also thankful to his fellow researchers Huamin Shi, Sheng Sun, Rong Fu, Hang Wang and Jing Gao for their useful comments and suggestions on the topic. Finally, the author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers and Potentials editor Mary K. Campbell for their valuable comments.

About the author

The author is a 3rd year PhD student in the School of Electrical and Electronic engineering at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering with the first class from the Indian institute of Technology, Bombay. After his undergraduate studies at the IIT-Bombay, he worked as a software engineer for a year at the MphasiS, Pune and Banglore. His present research interests are in metamaterials, electromagnetic band gap, filters and periodic structures.

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