Abstract
Perhaps there is no single topic that has elicited more attention, and has created more excitement in the scientific community in recent years, as that of Metamaterials. In this talk we will begin by reviewing the fundamentals of Metamaterials by asking the question: "How do we categorize metamaterials and derive their effective medium properties?" We will then go on to address a related question that is very relevant from the point of view of a practicing engineer, namely: "How can they help us build better 'widgets', such as flat superlenses, highly-directive small antennas, miniaturized sensors, cloaks that make objects invisible [1] and devices that exhibit extraordinary transmission (EOT). (See Figs. 1 through 4)
Next, we examine the question whether the effective medium approach to designing these metamaterial-based devices leads us to the designs which perform in accordance with the predictions based on the effective medium theory. The aim of this study is to sort out the facts from the fictional buzz that often surrounds the topic of metamaterials. We then draw some conclusions on the basis of a systematic study of a number of metamaterial-based designs that we investigate in the process of searching for the answers to the questions posed above. Another outcome of this study is the development of an alternate design procedure, which always leads to reliable results
Finally, we illustrate the application of the above procedure to the design of directivity-enhanced planar antennas [2], e.g., MPAs (microstrip patch antennas) and dipoles that are used as exciters of a Fabry-Perot cavity, in which the superstrate is either a dielectric or EBG slab, as shown in Fig. 5 and 6. Our objective is to realize as high aperture efficiency as possible, and we describe a systematic procedure for achieving this goal.