Planar metamaterial with separately voltage tunable electric and magnetic dispersion based on liquid crystal

In this work a planar metamaterial unit cell in coplanar waveguide (CPW) technology with separately tunable magnetic and electric dispersion is presented. The tunability is realized by a dielectric layer of liquid crystal (LC). Alignment of the LC molecules is achieved by applying static electric or magnetic fields. The independent tuning of the effective permeability and permittivity is demonstrated analytically and by simulations and measurements of a prototype designed for an operation frequency of 30 GHz.