Advanced Metamaterial Circuits for Microwave and Millimeter Wave Applications

The exploration of various new architectures and fabrication techniques for implementing miniaturized metamaterial circuits for radio frequency (RF) applications is presented. The possibility of using low resistivity silicon, glass, liquid crystal polymer (LCP) and conventional printed circuit board (PCB) organic substrates for compact advanced metamaterial applications is addressed. The design, modeling, simulation and fabrication processes of the compact metamaterial devices are discussed in detail. As a first step, the composite right/left-handed (CRLH) approach for implementing metamaterials RF circuits is applied to the design of dual band applications using commercial lumped elements on a conventional PCB. Next, a multilayer surface micromachined fabrication process that utilizes the negative tone photopatternable epoxy SU8 and the negative tone photopatternable resin Benzocyclobutene (BCB) as dielectric interface layers on low cost organic carrier substrates, is employed for implementing highly compact CRLH transmission lines for broadband and dual band operation up to 40 GHz. Our study shows that, SU8 and BCB are good candidates for implementing compact metamaterial applications. The study continues with the implementation of compact resonators that make use of reduced mode versions of the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) for narrow band, wideband and dual band bandpass filters. The half mode SIW (HMSIW), quarter mode SIW (QMSIW) and eight mode SIW (EMSIW) loaded with a metamaterial particle, the complementary split ring resonator (CSRR), are proposed to implement compact bandpass filters working below the original waveguide cutoff frequency. Theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration are provided for bandpass filters working at S and X frequency bands on a conventional PCB substrate. Additional experimental implementations include a surface micromachined SU8 embedded CSRR loaded HMSIW bandpass filter working at 12 GHz.  At the end, the proposed cavities are also applied for the design of a set of bandpass filters for operation at 25 GHz and  60 GHz using the flexible substrate LCP and the BCB resin as dielectrics. Finally, since the conventional printed circuit board (PCB), low resistivity silicon and glass are selected as the supporting substrates for the micromachined CRLH devices and filters; the compatibility with conventional microwave PCB implementations and CMOS integrated circuits is maintained. ( en )