Chiral metamaterial structures with strong optical activity and their applications

Abstract

We numerically and experimentally introduce a chiral metamaterial (MTM) showing strong optical activity, dynamical circular dichroism, and mechanical tunability because of its efficient design. The proposed chiral MTM structure is composed of bi-layered discontinuous cross-wire-strips, and utilized in order to realize polarization rotation. It provides a giant negative refractive index and a large chirality. We also present a detailed numerical analysis in order to explain the physical interpretation of the designed structure mechanism with a parametric study. Moreover, an MTM absorber application of the proposed chiral MTM is presented to show an additional feature of the model. The introduced chiral design offers a much simpler geometry and more efficient results. In addition, the structure provides chiral nihility unlike the other chiral MTM studies in the literature. The experimental results of the fabricated prototype are in good agreement with the numerical simulations. As a result, the suggested chiral MTM enables myriad potential applications in polarization converters, radar, and military technologies.