Abstract
A highly sensitive metamaterial device has been designed based on free-standing complementary asymmetric split ring resonators at terahertz (THz) frequencies. A thin-film overlayer deposited on the surface of the metal causes a red-shift in the THz transmission response. The results show the potential of such a device due to a high level of interaction between the overlayer analyte with the device that leads to a high-level sensitivity even with quite thin samples.