Abstract
The paper presents the analysis and fabrication of artificial materials with metallic cuboid inclusions (termed here as meta-atoms) in a dielectric host material. These synthetic materials or metamaterials have been additively manufactured with a fused deposition modelling (FDM) 3D-printer. The effective permittivity and permeability have been numerically analyzed using the Maxwell-Garnett and Lewin’s approximation. Simulations and measurements have shown good agreement with analytical calculations. The anisotropy of the heterogeneous mixture due to the orientation of the meta-atoms has been demonstrated. The effective permittivity has been increased by the presence of the meta-atoms, which has the potential of producing 3D-printing metamaterials with tailored electromagnetic properties.
Highlights
Metamaterials have distinct electromagnetic (EM) properties and have advantages in numerous applications such as antennas, lenses, acoustics and cloaking [1,2,3]
Metamaterials with regular metallic meta-atoms have been successfully fabricated and measured. These metallic cuboid inclusions placed in an array to form an artificial dielectric increased the effective relative permittivity compared with the host material
The measured results agreed well with the numerical calculations and full wave simulations. This indicated that metamaterials with tailored EM properties can be fabricated by controlling the distribution of the inclusions
Summary
Metamaterials have distinct electromagnetic (EM) properties and have advantages in numerous applications such as antennas, lenses, acoustics and cloaking [1,2,3]. These new materials can tailor the EM properties and control the EM wave propagation They can be used to design new antenna substrates or superstrates that have fabricational, physical and EM advantages over conventional dielectric materials. The anisotropic and diamagnetic effects due to cuboid metallic inclusions have been analysed using EM simulations in [15, 16], but fabrications of such heterogeneous material have not been widely reported in the literature. Advanced digital additive manufacturing (AM) technology builds a threedimensional (3D) object in successive layers This fabrication process has less material waste, and gives extra freedom for designing bespoke EM materials, which may be useful for high value, but low volume products. Metamaterials with different distances between the meta-atoms have been fabricated and measured to show the effects on the EM properties of the metallic inclusions.
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