Experimental studies of binary metamaterials

The authors introduce and study metamaterial superlattices in the form of binary structures of wires and split-ring resonators. The structures are created by sequences of printed circuit boards with split-ring resonators and wires, with the boards are arranged in the form of a superlattice. First, the free space scattering properties of composite structures were experimentally studied by measuring transmission and reflection of electromagnetic waves from a regular structure with different spacing between the boards. Then, the boards were arranged in the form of a superlattice, and the resonance splitting in the metamaterial was observed. In contrast to earlier studies, where multiband left-handed properties were obtained by using several resonant constituents in the metamaterial, the multiband effect in this setup is obtained by using identical resonators with varied spacing to form a superlattice.