Composites with mechanically tunable plasmon frequency

This paper summarizes our efforts to create a composite material with a mechanically tunable plasmon frequency at the microwave band. The permittivity of the composite changes sign at the plasmon frequency. Such composites, therefore, can be used as electromagnetic filters. Theoretically, an array of non-magnetic, metallic wire coils has been shown to have a plasmon behavior that is dependent on the wire thickness, coil inner diameter, pitch and coil spacing. Here, a material is made out of an array of coils placed within a non-metallic frame, and the material plasmon frequency is tuned through altering the pitch. The coils are arranged with alternating handedness to create an effective, non-chiral medium. A transmit/receive setup is used to characterize the electromagnetic behavior of the composite. The setup consists of a vector network analyzer and two horn antennas, which are used to measure the scattering parameters of the material. These parameters are then used to calculate the permittivity. The results show an increase in the plasmon frequency with increase in the pitch. Increasing the pitch 30%, from 3 to 3.9 mm, results in a corresponding increase from 6.3 to 7.5 GHz in the frequency. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)