Wideband Miniaturized Design of Complementary Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Waveguide Based on Interdigital Structures.

In this paper, we present to achieve a broadband miniaturized transmission waveguide based on complementary spoof surface plasmon polaritons (CSSPPs). For this purpose, a novel SSPP design that consists of a corrugated slot line and a group of additional interdigital structures (ISs) is proposed, which brings in an extra solution to control the cut-off property of CSSPPs. The transmission cut-off frequency of the proposed design decreases with the increasing of the number of the ISs. Since the width of CSSPP waveguide is directly related to the operating frequency, the degree of miniaturization can be modulated freely by carefully choosing the number of the ISs. A prototype of device with four-ISs introduced is designed and fabricated. And the cut-off frequency of the design decreases from 10 GHz to 5.3 GHz, when the ISs are added. Experimental results agree well with the numerical simulations. The proposed design illustrates great potentials in modern plasmonic integrated circuits.

Reduction of the spatially mutual coupling between dual-polarized patch antennas using coupled metamaterial slabs.

Mutual coupling inside antenna array is usually caused by two routes: signal leakage via conducting currents on the metallic background or surface wave along substrates; radio leakage received from space between antenna elements. The former one can be depressed by changing the distribution of surface currents, as reported in literatures. But when it comes to the latter one, the radiation-leakage-caused coupling, traditional approaches using circuit manipulation may be inefficient. In this article, we propose and design a new type of decoupling module, which is composed of coupled metamaterial (MTM) slabs. Two classes of MTM particles, the interdigital structure (IS) and the split-ring resonators (SRRs), are adopted to provide the first and second modulations of signal. We validate its function to reduce the radiation leakage between two dual-polarized patch antennas. A prototype is fabricated in a volume with subwavelength scale (0.6λ × 0.3λ × 0.053λ) to provide 7dB improvement for both co-polarization and cross-polarization isolations from 1.95 to 2.2 GHz. The design has good potential for wireless communication and radar systems.

A series of compact rejection filters based on the interaction between spoof SPPs and CSRRs.

We propose a method to synthesize several band-rejection filters by etching split-ring resonators (SRRs) on the transmission line for spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), which is made of double-side or single-side corrugated metal strips. From dispersion relations, the corrugated strips can support spoof SPP modes when the operating frequency is less than the cutoff frequency. The electric field component perpendicular to the strip surface of the SPP modes can excite the complementary SRRs (CSRRs), leading to resonant modes preventing the SPP propagation near the resonant frequencies. Using this principle, single-frequency rejection filters, double-frequency rejection filters, and broad band-stop filters with bandwidth of 1.5 GHz have been designed and fabricated using the single- and/or double-side corrugated strips. Both measured results and numerical simulations demonstrate the excellent filtering characteristics of all design, which are in good agreements. The isolation of all filters can be less than -20 dB, and even reach to -38 dB at rejection frequencies. The proposed rejection and stop-band filters give important potentials to develop integrated plasmonic functional devices and circuits at microwave and terahertz frequencies.

Multi-layer topological transmissions of spoof surface plasmon polaritons.

Spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in microwave frequency provide a high field confinement in subwavelength scale and low-loss and flexible transmissions, which have been widely used in novel transmission waveguides and functional devices. To play more important roles in modern integrated circuits and systems, it is necessary and helpful for the SPP modes to propagate among different layers of devices and chips. Owing to the highly confined property and organized near-field distribution, we show that the spoof SPPs could be easily transmitted from one layer into another layer via metallic holes and arc-shaped transitions. Such designs are suitable for both the ultrathin and flexible single-strip SPP waveguide and double-strip SPP waveguide for active SPP devices. Numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate the broadband and high-efficiency multi-layer topological transmissions with controllable absorption that is related to the superposition area of corrugated metallic strips. The transmission coefficient of single-strip SPP waveguide is no worse than -0.8 dB within frequency band from 2.67 GHz to 10.2 GHz while the transmission of double-strip SPP waveguide keeps above -1 dB within frequency band from 2.26 GHz to 11.8 GHz. The proposed method will enhance the realizations of highly complicated plasmonic integrated circuits.

Suppressing side-lobe radiations of horn antenna by loading metamaterial lens.

We propose a new approach to control the amplitude and phase distributions of electromagnetic fields over the aperture of a horn antenna. By loading a metamaterial lens inside the horn antenna, a tapered amplitude distribution of the aperture field is achieved, which can suppress the side-lobe radiations of the antenna. The metamaterial is further manipulated to achieve a flat phase distribution on the horn aperture to avoid the gain reduction that usually suffers in the conventional low-sidelobe antenna designs. A prototype of the metamaterial-loaded horn antenna is designed and fabricated. Both numerical simulations and measured results demonstrate the tapered aperture-field distribution and significant reduction of side-lobe and back-lobe radiations in the operating frequency band.

Broadband frequency-selective spoof surface plasmon polaritons on ultrathin metallic structure.

We propose an ultrathin metallic structure to produce frequency-selective spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in the microwave and terahertz frequencies. Designed on a thin dielectric substrate, the ultrathin metallic structure is composed of two oppositely oriented single-side corrugated strips, which are coupled to two double-side corrugated strips. The structure is fed by a traditional coplanar waveguide (CPW). To make a smooth conversion between the spatial modes in CPW and SPP modes, two transition sections are also designed. We fabricate and measure the frequency-selective spoof SPP structure in microwave frequencies. The measurement results show that the reflection coefficient is less than -10 dB with the transmission loss around 1.5 dB in the selective frequency band from 7 to 10 GHz, which are in good agreements with numerical simulations. The proposed structure can be used as an SPP filter with good performance of low loss, high transmission, and wide bandwidth in the selective frequency band.

Multiple Fano resonances in spoof localized surface plasmons.

We present the occurrence of bright modes and dark modes in spoof localized surface plasmons (LSPs) generated by ultrathin corrugated metallic disks. As two such disks with asymmetric geometries are placed in close proximity, we find that dark modes (in multipoles) of one disk emerge by coupling with the bright modes (in dipoles) of the other disk. Then we further observe multiple Fano resonances due to destructive interferences of dark modes with the overlapping and broadened bright modes. These Fano line-shapes clearly exhibit the strong polarization dependence. We design and fabricate the ultrathin corrugated bi-disk structure in the microwave frequency, and the measurement results show reasonable agreement with theoretical predictions and numerical simulations. Such multiple Fano resonances could be exploited for the plasmonic devices at lower frequencies.

Controlling rejections of spoof surface plasmon polaritons using metamaterial particles.

Based on the dispersion relation, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) or spoof SPPs are always propagating surface waves when the operating frequency is below the asymptotic limit - the surface plasma frequency. Here we propose a method to control the rejections of spoof SPPs using metamaterial particles. By introducing electrically resonant metamaterials near an ultrathin corrugated metallic strip - the spoof SPP waveguide - to produce tight coupling and mismatch of surface impedance, we show that the SPP modes are rejected near the resonant frequencies within the propagating band. Through the modulation of scaling factor of metamaterial particles, we can manipulate the rejections of SPP modes from narrowband to broadband. Both simulation and experiment results verify the tunability of SPP rejections, which have important applications in filtering SPP waves in plasmonic circuits and systems.