Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2009
This paper presents a new planar particle that shows negative effective permittivity under irradiation by an electromagnetic wave. The mutual coupling between the couples of these particles is studied in particular. The response of this particle sensitive to an electric field is strongly anisotropic. The particle is aimed to be used to compose an isotropic epsilon-negative metamaterial in two forms. First, a unit cell of the metamaterial consists of a cube bearing six particles on its faces, located with specific orientations. The experiments showed that this unit cell is suitable for manufacturing an isotropic epsilon-negative metamaterial obtained by arranging these cells in a 3D cubic periodic system. The second form of an epsilon-negative metamaterial with an isotropic response consists of the planar particles themselves, distributed quasi-randomly, composing a 2D system and/or of particles placed in spherical shells and distributed fully randomly in a hosting material forming a 3D system. The isotropy of these systems was verified by measurements in a rectangular waveguide.