3D printing of anisotropic metamaterials

Abstract

Material properties in radio frequency and microwave regimes are limited due to the lack of molecular resonances at these frequencies. Metamaterials are an attractive means to realize a prescribed permittivity or permeability function, but these are often prohibitively lossy due to the use of inefficient metallic resonators. All-dielectric metamaterials offer excellent potential to overcome these losses, but they provide a much weaker interaction with an applied wave. Much design freedom can be realized from all-dielectric structures if their dispersion and anisotropy are cleverly engineered. This, however, leads to structures with very complex geometries that cannot be manufactured by conventional techniques. In this work, artificially anisotropic metamaterials are designed and then manufactured by 3D printing. The effective material properties are measured in the lab and agree well with model predictions.