ABSTRACT
As addressed in Chapter 1, homogeneous metamaterials are constructed by periodically arranged identical artificial “atoms” with subwavelength scales. In the microwave region, these meta-atoms usually have macroscopic sizes and may take one of the following forms: 3D volumetric particles, planar complementary or waveguided (WG) elements, and LC-loaded transmission line (TL) grids or meshes (see Chapter 3). Metamaterials implemented from these three kinds of meta-atoms are referred to as bulk, WG, and TL metamaterials, respectively. By reasonably choosing the periodicity, the structure and the dimensions or other characteristic values of those meta-atoms, homogeneous metamaterials are able to achieve numerous kinds of effective medium properties, including those difficult or even impossible to realize by naturally occurring materials. Heretofore, homogeneous metamaterials have been mainly involved in realizing four categories of effective media: SNG media, DNG media, ZIM, and DPS media. An introduction on how to build homogeneous metamaterials with these effective media properties in the microwave band is given in Section 4.1. Afterward, some typical EM wave-controlling applications of those homogeneous metamaterials are presented in Sections 4.2 through 4.5.
