2010 Volume E93.C Issue 7 Pages 1063-1071
Multilayered volumetric composite right/left handed metamaterial structures are investigated. The present structure is composed of conducting mesh plates and dielectric layers including dielectric resonators. The 2-D composite right/left handed metamaterial structure is designed for the in-plane propagation. Propagation mode analysis was made for the volumetric structure under the periodic boundary condition along the normal to the layers as well as for finite number of layered type for comparison. The negative-refractive-index planar lenses were designed and fabricated for the demonstration. It is found from the numerical simulation that the beam focusing through the planar lens with large number of layers is clearly confirmed in both magnitude and phase distribution of the fields. On the other hand, for small number of layers, the beam spot is not found in the magnitude distribution due to the effect of discontinuities between air and designed structure at the top and bottom surfaces, but is still found in the phase distribution. The effect of number of stacked layers on the propagation characteristics is discussed by comparing the numerical simulation results with the measurement.