Optical Metamaterial Design, Fabrication, and Test

摘要

Metamaterials, materials that make use of naturally occurring materials and designed structures to create materials with special properties not found in nature, are a fascinating new area of research, combining the fields of physics, microfabrication, and material science. This work will focus on the development of metamaterials operating in the visible and infrared which will be constructed and tested for basic optical properties. Possible applications for these materials will not be investigated. The this work will go into the fabrication and test of layered metal-dielectric structures, called layered metamaterials, as these structures hold potential for applications in advanced optical systems. These structures are designed to have a low index of refraction, with a designed permittivity approaching zero due to the permittivity of the metal, which is negative, and dielectric, which is positive, effectively canceling each other out. The other effort of this investigation is the fabrication and test of a 3D or 'fishnet' metamaterial, one that is a sandwich of metal and dielectric, with holes in those layers, creating interwoven strips of layered material. These interwoven layered strips combine elements with negative permittivity and permeability to create a negative refractive index. In this work, five different combinations of metal and dielectric are fabricated and tested, with one showing behavior indicative of a low permittivity at an infrared wavelength. The investigations into the 3D material did yield a possible for design using a novel material for the dielectric, but fabrication was not completed and only results from simulation were obtained, which suggest a negative index may occur.