We design, fabricate, and characterize split-ring resonator (SRR) based planar terahertz metamaterials (MMs) on ultrathin silicon nitride substrates for biosensing applications. Proof-of-principle demonstration of increased sensitivity in thin substrate SRR-MMs is shown by detection of doped and undoped protein thin films (silk fibroin) of various thicknesses and by monitoring transmission changes using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. SRR-MMs fabricated on thin film substrates show significantly better performance than identical SRR-MMs fabricated on bulk silicon substrates paving the way for improved biological and chemical sensing applications.

We present frequency tunable metamaterial designs at terahertz (THz) frequencies

This paper presents the results of a feasibility study for the design of multi-band tunable metamaterials based on the use of micro-split SRR (MSSRR) structures. In this study, we have designed and constructed a conventional split-ring resonator (SRR) unit cell (type A) and two modified SRR unit cells having the same design parameters except that they contain two (type B) or four (type C) additional micro-splits on the outer square ring, along the arm having the main split. Transmission characteristics of the resulting MSSRR cells are obtained both numerically and experimentally and compared to those of the ordinary SRR unit cell. It is observed that the presence of the additional micro-splits leads to the increase of resonance frequency by substantial amounts due to the series capacitance effect. Next, we have designed and constructed 2 x 2 homogeneous arrays of magnetic resonators which consist of the same type of cells (either A, or B, or C). Such MSSRR blocks are found to provide only a single frequency band of operation around the magnetic resonance frequency of the related unit cell structure. Finally, we have designed and constructed 2 x 2 and 3 x 2 inhomogeneous arrays which contain columns of different types of metamaterial unit cells. We have shown that these inhomogeneous arrays provide two or three different frequency bands of operations due to the use of different magnetic resonators together. The number of additional micro-splits in a given MSSRR cell can be interactively controlled by various switching technologies to modify the overall metamaterial topology for the purpose of activating different sets of multiple resonance frequencies. In this context, use of electrostatically actuated RF MEMS switches is discussed, and their implementation is suggested as a future work, to control the states of micro-splits in large MSSRR arrays to realize tunable multi-band metamaterials.

Abstract-This paper introduces a planar µ-negative (MNG) metamaterial structure, called double-sided split ring resonator (DSRR), which combines the features of a conventional SRR and a broadside-coupled SRR (BC-SRR) to obtain much better miniaturization at microwave frequencies for a given physical cell size. In this study, electromagnetic transmission characteristics of DSRR, BC-SRR and conventional SRR are investigated in a comparative manner for varying values of substrate parameters which are thickness, the real part of relative permittivity and dielectric loss tangent. Simulation results have shown that magnetic resonance patterns of all these three structures are affected in a similar way from variations in permittivity and in loss tangent. However, changes in substrate thickness affect their resonance characteristics quite differently: In response to decreasing substrate thickness, resonance frequency of the SRR increases slowly while the bandwidth and the depth of its resonance curve do not change much. For the DSRR and BC-SRR structures, on the other hand, resonance frequency, half power bandwidth and the depth of resonance curve strongly decrease with decreasing substrate thickness. Among these three structures, all having the same unit cell dimensions, the newly suggested DSRR is found to reach the lowest resonance frequency, hence the smallest electrical size, which is a highly desired property not only for more effective medium approximation but also for miniaturization in RF design. The BC-SRR, on the other hand, provides the largest 36Ekmekci and Turhan-Sayan resonance bandwidth which is almost three times of the resonance bandwidth of the SRR. The bandwidth of the DSRR approaches to that of the BC-SRR as the planar separation between its inner and outer rings increases.

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