Surface waves on complementary metasurfaces

This paper presents an analysis of a class of metasurfaces (MTSs) consisting of a planar layer made of metal patches and apertures with self-complementary geometries. It is shown that these MTSs may exhibit an inductive or capacitive reactance depending on the connection status of the patch vertexes. A simple analytical model is derived to predict the dispersion curve of the supported surface waves (SWs). Furthermore, it is shown that connecting or disconnecting the metal patches along a given path allows for a confinement of the SWs on such a path. This property opens the possibility of realizing reconfigurable transmission lines by controlling the status of patch connections through miniaturized switches.