In order to more clearly observe the bianisotropic effects due to fabrication-induced structural asymmetries in negative-index metamaterials based on a fishnet structure, it is necessary to measure the optical properties with symmetric substrate and superstrate bounding layers. This is accomplished in this report using an indexmatching fluid and identical substrate and superstrate glass materia...

A compact millimeter-wave (MMW) wideband high-gain antenna is proposed and implemented. The development is based on the design principle of wideband Fabry-Perot resonator antennas (FPRAs). The antenna consists of triple-layer dielectric slabs and a PEC ground, and it is fed by a rectangular waveguide. All slabs are used to form the superstrate that exhibits the increasing reflection phase at th...

High directive stacked multilayer and edge coupled planar microstrip patch antenna made from a single-layer helical resonating metamaterial superstrate has been investigated. Metamaterials are artificial materials whose properties not found in nature. These materials have negative permittivity and permeability and negative index of refraction over a frequency band. In this paper, an innovative ...

A theoretical analysis of a gap-coupled stacked annular ring microstrip antenna with superstrate is performed in order to obtain wider bandwidth operation. The effects of air gap, superstrate thickness and feeding point location on the antenna performance are analyzed in TM11 mode using equivalent circuit concept. It is noted that the proposed antenna is very sensitive to the feeding point loca...

We demonstrate the use of a phononic crystal to enable the nebulisation of liquid droplets from low-cost disposable arrays, using surface acoustic waves (SAW). The SAWs were generated using interdigitated transducers (IDT) on a piezoelectric surface (LiNbO(3)) and the acoustic waves were coupled into a disposable phononic crystal structure, referred to as a superstrate. Using its excellent refl...

A high gain patch antenna inspired by 4 layers of negative refractive index (NRI) metamaterial (MTM) superstrate is proposed to operate at downlink radio frequency (RF) band (935MHz to 960MHz) of GSM 900). The MTM unit cell consists of a nested split ring resonator (SRR) on one side and strip line laminated on other side of FR4 substrate. The effective permeability and permittivityof the unit c...

A novel compact triple band slit cut circular patch antenna with superstrate is proposed; slits on the patch provide additional resonances. The superstrate (cover) of dielectric layer provides protection to printed circuit antenna from environmental hazards due to abnormal weather conditions. The slits add two resonances in the resonance of a circular patch to achieve triple band antenna for mu...

This paper briefs the photothermal reliability studies we conducted on different encapsulation materials for some U.S. PV companies that are subcontractors of the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology (PVMaT) program. The results indicate that the photothermal stability of two foreign ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) films is dependent on the formulation, curing method and condition, as well as acc...

Few works on symmetric and asymmetric dielectrics have been published, specifically the case of chiral and bi-isotropic media. For this reason and taking into account the complexity of the studied environment, this paper treats the asymmetrical effects on the resonant frequency and the bandwidth of a rectangular microstrip patch antenna in a complex bi-anisotropic substrate-superstrate configur...

Some useful features of microstrip patch antennas are low profile, low weight and easy fabrication. However this type of antenna suffers from having a low gain, caused by propagation surface waves. In this paper, a new near zero refractive index metamaterial (MTM) unit cell is designed and fabricated as a superstrate over a Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antennas (RMPA). In order to obtain a maxi...