Demonstration of negative refractive index with low‐cost inkjet‐printed microwave metamaterials

Abstract

We present low‐cost fabrications of inkjet‐printed metamaterials that are resonating at microwave frequencies. A very low‐cost setup involving commercial desktop printers loaded with silver‐based inks is constructed and used to fabricate the metamaterials. We show that, despite the challenges in the low‐cost fabrication processes, successful prints, and metamaterial samples can be obtained. A composite metamaterial design, which possesses a bandlimited transparency due to the induced negative refractive index, is fabricated and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of low‐cost metamaterials with relatively complex geometries involving three‐dimensional arrangements.

Paper-based flexible metamaterial for microwave applications

“…İbili et al demonstrate a kind of inkjet-printed metamaterials which operate at X-band by using silverbased inks, shown in Figure 2 [62]. The SRRs arrays was printed on Canon GP-501 Glossy paper by using a commercial ink-jet printer (Epson Stylus C88+).…”

Solution box: SOLBOX-09, SOLBOX-10

“…The dimensions for a single SRR are shown in detail. This geometry was previously used in [12] to construct a composite metamaterial. The surfaces are assumed to have zero thickness, while they are modeled as perfect electric conductors.…”

Low-Cost Inkjet-Printed Multiband Frequency-Selective Structures Consisting of U-Shaped Resonators

“…Recently, inkjet printing technology has attracted the interest of many researchers, as it enables fast, low-cost, and easy fabrication of many radio-frequency and microwave components [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Successfully fabricated samples of antennas [4,7,8,[12][13][14], radio-frequency identification tags [1,2,17,18], metamaterials [5,9,10,15,16], as well as frequency-selective structures and surfaces [3,6,11] have been demonstrated in the literature, using both special material printers and conventional inkjet printers that are modified accordingly [12]. When employing very low-cost inkjet printing setups, which involve standard printers loaded with metal-based inks, fabrication errors need to be considered carefully, while these errors often put limitations in the design procedures [14].…”