Subwavelength microwave resonators exhibiting strong coupling to radiation modes

Howard R. Stuart, and Cuong Tran

Citation: Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 151108 (2005); doi: 10.1063/1.2099524

View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2099524
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apl/87/15
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 87, 151108 共2005兲

Subwavelength microwave resonators exhibiting strong coupling

to radiation modes
Howard R. Stuarta兲
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Whippany, New Jersey 07981
Cuong Tran
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, New Jersey 07733
共Received 3 June 2005; accepted 25 August 2005; published online 4 October 2005兲
We demonstrate a subwavelength spherical resonator at microwave frequencies designed to mimic
the electromagnetic behavior of a negative permittivity sphere. The structure, which has a radius of
⬃␭ / 12 共where ␭ is the resonant wavelength兲, consists of an axially symmetric array of
noninterconnected conducting elements forming a resonant spherical object. The structure exhibits
many of the properties inherent to negative permittivity spherical resonators, the most notable being
a very strong coupling to radiation modes despite being much smaller than the wavelength. This
characteristic is quantified by the radiation Q-factor, which was observed to be near 1.5 times the
theoretical limit in some of the measured samples, matching the performance achievable in a
negative permittivity sphere of comparable electrical size. These resonators may find application in
the design of electrically small antennas, as well as in the experimental “simulation,” at microwave
frequencies, of nanophotonic device concepts based upon localized plasmon resonances in metal
nanoparticles. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. 关DOI: 10.1063/1.2099524兴

It is well known that subwavelength particles with nega-
tive electric permittivity have interesting electromagnetic
properties; this is understood from the study of metal nano-
particles at optical frequencies. Metal nanoparticles have
strong optical scattering resonances, despite being much
smaller than the wavelength, due to the excitation of local-
ized surface plasmons inside the particle.1 These resonances
have been used for a variety of applications, such as surface
enhanced Raman scattering,2 enhanced photodetection,3 and
as a means of achieving light guiding and manipulation over
subdiffraction length scales.4 The ability to create effective
analogies of negative permittivity particle resonances at mi-
crowave frequencies would be of great interest, both for the
experimental “simulation” of nanophotonic device concepts
at microwave frequencies,5 and also for potential applica-
tions at microwave frequencies, such as electrically small
antennas.6
In this letter, we demonstrate a resonator at microwave
frequencies designed to mimic the electromagnetic behavior
of the negative permittivity sphere. A previous approach to-
wards achieving this goal was reported by Smith et al.7 In
that work, the authors first demonstrated a bulk medium,
consisting of a square lattice of loop-wire structures, exhib-
iting negative electric permittivity below ⬃10.7 GHz; the
parameters of the bulk medium then served as the basis for
constructing a spherical resonator. This approach is limited
by the lattice spacing of the structure 共⬃␭ / 13 in this ex-
ample, where ␭ is the resonant wavelength of the sphere兲,
which places a minimum size on the achievable resonator
radius 共a radius of ␭ / 5 was demonstrated in Ref. 7兲, and
insures that the resonator shape only crudely approximates
that of a sphere for small resonators. Here we present an
alternative approach towards the design of such a resonator:
rather than starting with a bulk medium exhibiting negative
a兲
Electronic mail: hrstuart@ieee.org
permittivity,8–10 we design the resonator directly. While the
resulting resonator does not exhibit negative permittivity in a
rigorous sense, many of the salient properties of the negative
permittivity spherical resonator are present in the structure.
Our approach has the advantage that the resonator can be
made quite small with respect to the wavelength, and the
shape approximates very well that of a sphere. In contrast to
previous resonator studies conducted within waveguides,11
our studies are conducted using free-space scattering mea-
surements. This is critical for demonstrating the strong cou-
pling strength between the resonator and the free-space ra-
diation mode, which is an important characteristic of the
negative permittivity sphere. We experimentally demon-
strate, at frequencies near 1.9 GHz, a spherical resonator
with a radius of ⬃␭ / 12 and a radiation Q-factor approaching
1.5 times the theoretical limit, matching that observed in the
negative permittivity sphere.
The basic structure and design parameters of the resona-
tor are illustrated in Fig. 1. The resonator is constructed by
assembling an axially symmetric periodic array of printed
circuit boards 共PCBs兲, each containing identical patterns cor-
responding to that shown in Fig. 1共a兲 共the two-ring planar
FIG. 1. 共a兲 Basic planar building block 共two-ring resonator兲. The conductor
pattern is shown in black. The resonator radius a is defined as the distance
from the center to the outer edge of the circular conductor trace. 共b兲 Six-ring
spherical resonator formed using three of the planar structures.

0003-6951/2005/87共15兲/151108/3/$22.50 87, 151108-1 © 2005 American Institute of Physics

151108-2 H. R. Stuart and C. Tran
FIG. 2. Electric field of the lowest order resonant mode in the eight-ring
spherical resonator. The cross section is taken along a plane bisecting two of
the conductor planes 共the modal profile within the conductor planes is very
similar, but contains strongly enhanced fields near the corners of the con-
ductors兲. The gray scale represents the magnitude of the electric field.
resonator兲. By machining appropriate slots near the center
axis of the individual PCBs, a structure resembling that
shown in Fig. 1共b兲 can be formed, wherein the conductor
patterns are arranged axially so as to approximate a spherical
object. Note that no electrical connections are made between
the individual PCBs. In our experiments, we studied spheri-
cal resonators composed of four, six, and eight rings, as well
as the planar two-ring resonator. In this letter, we present a
subset of our experimental results, illustrating the important
properties of this new resonator.
The electromagnetic properties of the resonators were
studied using full-vectorial finite element simulation.12 A
three-dimensional eigenmode solver was employed with per-
fectly matched layers 共PMLs兲 placed at the outer boundaries
of the computation region. The PMLs cause the eigenmode
solver to return complex frequencies f res as eigenvalues; the
resonant frequency is determined from Re关f res兴, and the ra-
diation Q-factor is determined from the ratio
Re关f res兴 / 共2 Im关f res兴兲. The fundamental mode of an eight-ring
resonator is shown in Fig. 2. In this mode, the currents in all
eight rings oscillate in phase, and the mode is that of an
electric dipole oriented along the central axis of the resonator
共the z-axis兲. Within the sphere, away from the central axis,
the electric field is uniform along the z-direction, and oppo-
site in direction to the field outside the sphere at its poles
共strongly reminiscent of the negative permittivity sphere, in
which the mode is uniform throughout the entire sphere and
opposite in sign to the field at the poles兲. We also note that
the resonant oscillation, whereby a current flows through an
inductive pathway within the sphere and resonates with a
capacitance around the outer edge of the sphere, is reminis-
cent of recent lumped-element modeling of negative permit-
tivity spheres.13
The property that distinguishes the negative permittivity
sphere relates to its strong coupling to radiation modes. This
property is often described in terms of the resonant scattering
cross section of the sphere, which can be much larger than its
physical size even when the sphere is substantially
subwavelength.1 Recall, however, that all small radiating di-
pole resonators are fundamentally characterized by a peak
scattering cross section that is 共3 / 2␲兲␭2.14 It is therefore not
difficult to design subwavelength microwave resonators with
Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 151108 共2005兲
large resonant scattering cross sections. The structure in Fig.
1共a兲 共the two-ring planar resonator兲 is one example: finite
element scattering simulations confirm that its peak scatter-
ing cross section is indeed ⬃共3 / 2␲兲␭2, as is likewise true for
many other conductor patterns, planar and nonplanar, exhib-
iting dipole resonances. However, these alternative resona-
tors do not approximate well the behavior of the negative
permittivity sphere in the manner of the resonator illustrated
in Fig. 2. The consequence of this becomes clear by evalu-
ating not the resonant scattering cross section, but rather the
free-space radiation Q-factor of the resonator.
The radiation Q-factor is inversely related to the power
factor,15 defined as the square of the magnitude of the field
coupling constant between the resonator and radiation mode.
It is well known from the study of electrically small antennas
that the radiation Q-factor of a small resonator must obey the
following fundamental relationship:16,17
1 1
Q艌 + , 共1兲
共ka兲3 ka
where k is the wave number 共2␲ / ␭兲, and a is the radius of
the smallest sphere enclosing the resonator. Equation 共1兲
states that, in the absence of loss, the Q-factor of a resonator
cannot be less than a certain minimum value, referred to here
as the Chu limit.16 For many applications, it is important to
minimize the radiation Q-factor. This insures a wider band-
width of operation in microwave antennas,18 while for appli-
cations involving metal nanoparticles, a strong coupling to
radiation modes insures that scattering effects dominate over
absorption in the metal.19 A sensible figure-of-merit for small
radiating resonators is the ratio Q / QChu 共the ratio of the reso-
nator Q-factor to the Chu limit兲, which we refer to here as
the Chu factor. Ideally, the Chu factor should be made as
small as possible, although it must always have a value ⬎1
for lossless structures. It has recently been shown that the
negative permittivity sphere is characterized by a Chu factor
of 1.5 for spheres of radius a Ⰶ ␭.6 The negative permittivity
sphere is therefore a nearly ideal subwavelength radiating
resonator; any resonator that successfully mimics its behav-
ior should also achieve comparable Chu factor values. A Chu
factor near 1.5 is indeed the most difficult performance met-
ric to meet in the design of small radiating resonator struc-
tures; as we show here, the eight-ring resonator illustrated in
Fig. 2 accomplishes this goal.
We have experimentally characterized the fabricated
resonators using a conventional free-space scattering mea-
surement in a microwave anechoic chamber. The experimen-
tal procedure was as follows: source and receiver horn an-
tennas were placed in the chamber and oriented at 90° with
respect to each other, minimizing direct specular transmis-
sion between the two. A microwave network analyzer was
used to characterize the magnitude and phase of the received
signal versus frequency, first without the resonator present
共giving the background field inside the chamber兲 and then
with the resonator present in the transmission beam path,
oriented with its resonant axis parallel to the polarization of
the excitation beam. The background field was then sub-
tracted from the scattered field; the square of the magnitude
of the resulting corrected field clearly displayed the Lorent-
zian power spectrum indicative of the resonant mode of the
scattering object. A Lorentzian least-squares curve fit was
applied to the data to derive the center frequency and
151108-3 H. R. Stuart and C. Tran
FIG. 3. Resonant frequency 共left axis兲 and corresponding ka 共right axis兲 for
the two-ring and eight-ring resonators, vs gap size. Circles are for a trace
width of 1 mm, and diamonds are for a trace width of 0.5 mm. Solid circles/
lines are measured values; open circles with dashed lines are simulated
values. No simulation was performed for the eight-ring, 0.5 mm trace width
sample.
Q-factor of the resonance. Because the background subtrac-
tion is not perfect 共the presence of the resonator perturbs the
background兲, there is a small ripple in the data, and likewise
some uncertainty 共typically 10%–15%兲 in the measured
Q-factors.
In the fabricated samples, the resonators had a radius of
12 mm, a center offset of 1 mm, and all conductor patterns
were printed on 20-mil-thick pieces of RO4003 PCB sub-
strate 共with a dielectric constant of 3.38 and a loss tangent of
0.0021兲. The trace width was set to either 1 mm or 0.5 mm
in the various samples, and the gap size was varied between
2 and 6 mm. Figure 3 shows the resonant frequency as a
function of gap size for the two-ring and eight-ring resona-
tors. The simulated results are shown for comparison, dem-
onstrating very strong correspondence between simulation
and experiment in the two-ring resonators. For the eight-ring
resonators, the simulation mesh must be made substantially
more coarse in order to keep the model size small enough to
simulate 共due to computer memory limitations兲, and this re-
sults in a ⬃15% offset between the simulated and measured
values of the resonant frequency.
The measured resonant frequency values were used to
evaluate the normalized size ka of each of the resonators at
the resonant frequency. The measured Q-factor was then be
compared to the Chu limit, in order to derive the Chu factor.
Figure 4 shows the Chu factor versus ka for the two-, four-,
and eight-ring resonators. Plotting the data in this manner
illustrates very clearly the benefit of adding additional rings
to the resonator. Working within a design containing a fixed
number of rings, it does not appear possible to move to
smaller values of ka without increasing the Chu factor. How-
ever, increasing the number of rings results in lower Chu
factors at smaller ka values. A large improvement in perfor-
mance is seen when moving from planar resonators to volu-
metric resonators 共i.e., from the two-ring to the four-ring
Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 151108 共2005兲
FIG. 4. Measured Chu factor vs ka for the two-, four-, and eight-ring reso-
nators. Moving from planar to spherical structures, and increasing the num-
ber of rings, dramatically improves performance. In the eight-ring resona-
tors, a Chu factor of 1.5 is achieved at the widest gap size, matching that of
the negative permittivity sphere.
structures兲, and further improvement is seen by increasing
the number of rings from four to eight. This occurs because
the greater number of rings results in a resonant mode profile
that better approximates the full spherical shape. For the
eight-ring resonators, the Chu factor reaches a value of ⬃1.5
for the widest gap separations 共6 mm兲, matching the perfor-
mance of the negative permittivity sphere. Although the scat-
tering efficiency has not been measured directly 共scattering
efficiencies less than 100% would cause the measured
Q-factor to be lower than the radiation Q-factor兲, there is
generally a good correspondence between the measured and
simulated Q-factors, suggesting that the scattering efficien-
cies are likely high.
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