OPTICAL ENGINEERING, vol.54, no.8, 2015 (SCI-Expanded)
An alternative design of left-handed (LH) metamaterial (MTM) for waveguide configurations is presented with sensor and absorber applications. The LH structure is based on two identical circular ring resonators connected with a wire strip. Both simulation and experimental results show that the planar MTM has an LH resonance at similar to 9.9 GHz. Surface current and magnetic field distributions at the resonance are also presented to show the LH behavior of the structure in detail. In addition, a parametric study based on the gap size of the structure is also provided in order to present the dependency of the LH resonance. Next, the sensing process is presented with respect to the thickness, position, and dielectric constant variations of the superstrate layer located in front of the material surface. Finally, the absorption application of the structure in X-band is shown, and the results show that the absorber behaves as a perfect absorber with an absorption rate of 99.99%. As a result, the proposed structure can be used in many MTM applications, such as sensor, absorber, and soon. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)