Date of Award

6-14-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Ronald A. Coutu Jr., PhD.

Abstract

Metamaterials are engineered structures designed to alter the propagation of electromagnetic waves incident upon the structure. The focus of this research was the effect of metamaterials on electromagnetic signals at radio frequencies. RF meta-atoms were investigated to further develop the theory, modeling, design and fabrication of metamaterials. Comparing the analytic modeling and experimental testing, the results provide a deeper understanding into metamaterials which could lead to applications for beam steering, invisibility cloaking, negative refraction, super lenses, and hyper lenses. RF meta-atoms integrated with microelectromechanical systems produce tunable meta-atoms in the 10 - 15 GHz and 1 - 4 GHz frequency ranges. RF meta-atoms with structural design changes are developed to show how inductance changes based on structural modifications. RF meta-atoms integrated with gain medium are investigated showing that loss due to material characteristics can be compensated using active elements such as a Low Noise Amplifier. Integrating the amplifier into the split ring resonator causes a deeper null at the resonant frequency. The research results show that the resonant frequency can be tuned using microelectromechanical systems, or by induction with structural designs and reduce loss associated with the material conductivity by compensating with an active gain medium. Proposals that offer future research activities are discussed for inductance and active element meta-atoms. In addition, terahertz (THz), infrared (IR), and optical structures are briefly investigated

AFIT Designator

AFIT-DEE-ENG-12-04

DTIC Accession Number

ADA562268

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