Polymer based metamaterials – electromagnetic resonance of PEDOT : PSS for metamaterials applications

Abstract

Metamateial has received considerable interests over the past 10 years. Since the realization of negative permittivity and permeability in 2001, metamaterial with different designs and for different applications were heavily investigated in subsequent years. Split ring resonators (SRR) were the most recognized structures to achieve negative permeability for metamaterial design, the objective of this project was to choose a conductive polymer to construct SRR, and test the feasibility of such polymer as constituent element of metamateials. High conductive PEDOT: PSS was chosen and fabricated to SRR units for study in our project. PEDOT had proven metallic characteristics in reputable journals with conductivity comparable to copper. In this project, we demonstrated the whole process from SRR parameter optimization, SRR sample fabrication, reflection and transmission data collection and data analysis. Experiments data from ASTM tests and GTEM tests showed electromagnetic resonance can be obtained when incident beam penetrated perpendicular to the SRR plane, meaning negative permittivity was achieved in that frequency range. Relations of resonance peak position and strength with sample thickness, patterning parameters and SRR unit size were also discussed.