Wood zone plate fishnet metalens

Abstract

Fresnel-zone plate lenses provide focusing performance while having low profile. Unfortunately, they usually display higher reflection losses than conventional dielectric lenses. Here, we demonstrate a low-profile Wood zone plate metalens based on the fishnet metamaterial working in a near-zero regime with an equivalent refractive index less than unity (n f = 0.51). The metalens is made of alternating dielectric and fishnet metamaterial concentric rings. The use of fishnet metamaterial allows reducing the reflections from the lens, while maintaining low profile, low cost and ease of manufacturing. The lens is designed to work at the W-band of the millimeter-waves range with a focal length FL = 22.8 mm (7.5 k 0 ) aiming at antenna or radar system applications. The focusing performance of the lens along with its radiation characteristics in a lens antenna configuration have been studied numerically and confirmed experimentally, showing a gain improvement of ~2.5 dB with respect to a fishnet Soret metalens.