Simulation, measurement, and parameter extraction for a 5.8 GHz negative permittivity metamaterial

Metamaterials are commonly comprised of ring structures with negative effective permeability and wire structures with negative effective permittivity. However, the catalog of available negative permittivity devices remains somewhat limited. Recently, a novel unit cell comprised of two disks connected by a metal post was presented. The analysis of the unit cell predicted a resonant response, with negative effective permittivity above the resonant frequency. To verify the predicted metamaterial behavior, an experimental prototype has been fabricated and the effective permittivity has been extracted using measured S-parameters. The experimental results for the prototype device show the predicted resonant behavior, and the extracted parameters show a region of negative permittivity above resonance.