WHITEPAPER

MoDelinG AnD SiMulAtion of

MetAMAteriAl-BAseD DeVices for
InDustriAl APPlicAtions
Metamaterials offer great potential for the development of new technologies and to make
existing devices smaller, faster and more efficient. Metamaterials produce electromagnetic
phenomena that are not seen in natural materials, and come in a wide variety of types.
When developing a new metamaterial, simulation can be used both to analyze both
the bulk property of the material and individual element. This article will show how
CST STUDIO SUITE can be used to simulate and design metamaterials through the entire
workflow, from the design of the resonator to the implementation in a full device.

Metamaterials are structures designed to have electromag-
netic properties that do not exist in nature. The application of
metamaterials to industrial device design has great potential
in the fields of electronics and optics. Researchers have pro-
posed a huge range of devices using metamaterials, which
range from miniaturized, low-noise versions of existing com-
ponents such as waveguides, filters and antennas to brand
new devices that were previously impossible, such as cloaks
and superlenses that can overcome the diffraction limit.
■ Double negative (DNG) materials (materials which
behave as if they have negative permittivity and perme-
ability, and therefore negative refractive index)
■ Electronic band gap (EBG) structures (materials
with frequency bands that do not support EM wave
propagation)
■ Artificial magnetic conductors (AMC) (conductors with
very small tangential magnetic field even with a large
electric field along the surface).

There are several types of material that are broadly described These are illustrated in Figure 1.
as metamaterials, including:

Figure 1: Applications of metamaterials: (left) A compact horn with a DNG focusing component, (right top) a gapped EBG power plane for PCB noise mitigation and
(right bottom) a low-profile antenna using AMC technology.
CST AG WHITEPAPER MODELING AND SIMULATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED DEVICES FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS 2

OVerVieW

A typical metamaterial device consists of an array of reso-

nators at the millimeter or microscopic scale, embedded in
or around a macroscopic structure. The design of these res-
onators and the interaction between them mean that, on a
large enough scale, the metamaterial should act like a bulk
material with the desired properties.

To develop a metamaterial, both the individual unit cell and

the full-scale system need to be considered. While treating
the metamaterial as a bulk material with negative refractive
index is useful at early stages of the development, the final
design needs to take into account the properties of the meta-
material at the scale of individual cells.

Electromagnetic simulation can be used to verify theories

and develop metamaterial concepts before constructing any
prototypes. However, there are several special considerations
that the researcher should be aware of when modeling
metamaterials. Metamaterials comprise sub-wavelength el-
ements, but these elements are often arranged in electrically
large arrays. This means that a variety of solver technologies
are required to develop a metamaterial device efficiently.
CST  STUDIO  SUITE can be used to simulate metamaterials
at every step of the design process. (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Workflow for modeling the behavior of a metamaterial system, from a single
unit cell to a whole device.
CST AG WHITEPAPER MODELING AND SIMULATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED DEVICES FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS 3

Unit Cell DesiGn

There are numerous metamaterial topologies in the literature.
While they operate on different principles, they all need to be
carefully engineered so that they give the correct behavior at
the frequencies of interest. Simulation of the unit cell allows
physical values such as transmission, absorption and reflec-
tion coefficients to be calculated in a straightforward way.
For EBG applications, their behavior can be characterized by a
single element of the periodic structure (Figure 4) by means
of the dispersion diagram. The element can be modeled as
a unit cell and simulated using the eigenmode solver. The
eigenmode solver can handle the lossy metal properties of
the resonators and the dispersive properties of the substrate,
and can use periodic boundary conditions to model an entire
array based on a single element. 1
The dispersion diagram is produced by performing a param-
eter sweep over the phase relations in the transverse direc-
tions, as an example between the x and y periodic bound-
aries, and plotting the frequencies of each mode across the
Brillouin zone (Figure 3). After calculating the modes across
all phases, the band gaps are given by the absence of propa-
gating modes in certain frequency bands. CST STUDIO SUITE
includes a built-in template that sets up the parameters and
can generate dispersion diagrams automatically for a meta-
material model.
For problems which are driven by an excitation source, the
dispersion diagram can be obtained from the scattering pa-
rameters (S-parameters). This is most commonly done in
transmission line based devices like leaky wave antennas. To
generate these, either the transient solver or the frequency do-
main solver can be used. Just as with a classical material, the
S-parameters show how much power is reflected, how much
is transmitted, and how much is absorbed or re-radiated at
different frequencies.
Frequency domain simulation also allows the use of Floquet
ports. These can be used with the unit cell structure to calcu-
late the phase reflection diagram for any angle of incidence.
This phase relationship diagram offers an alternative approach
for calculating the band gap for an artificial magnetic conduc-
tor (AMC). The band gap corresponds to those frequencies
where the reflection phase is between ± 90°. In this region, the
magnitude of the surface impedance exceeds the free space
impedance, which means that antenna elements can lie very
close to the ground plane without being shorted out.

3.5
band gap

band gap
2.5
Mode 1
2 Mode 2
Mode 3

1.5

1
┌ X M ┌

Figure 3: Band gaps over the irreducible Brillouin zone (Γ-Χ-Μ-Γ) in the EBG structure Figure 4: A single gapped plane element representing the EBG
shown in Figure 4. power plane in Figure 1.
CST AG WHITEPAPER MODELING AND SIMULATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED DEVICES FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS 4

BulK ProPertY EXtrAction

Once the element has been designed, the next step of the
metamaterial design workflow (Figure 2) is to extract its ef-
fective electromagnetic properties. The bulk properties of a
metamaterial can be calculated using the Drude model for
permittivity and the Lorentz model for permeability:
This gives seven variables that need to be calculated: ε∞ (per-
mittivity at infinite frequency), μ∞ (permeability at infinite
frequency), ωp (plasma frequency), ω0 (resonance frequen-
cy), νc (collision frequency), δ (damping factor) and μs (static
permeability). To find the values that best fit the metama-
terial, a new 3D model of the system is created: a similar
unit cell, in which the detailed metamaterial structure has
been replaced by a single bulk material. This bulk material
is modeled as a Drude-Lorentz material, with the unknown
variables replaced by parameters in CST STUDIO SUITE.

S-Parameter Magnitude (dB)

1

0.9

0.8

S1,1 - bulk DNG

0.7 S1,1 - unit cell
S2,1 - bulk DNG
0.6 S2,1 - unit cell

0.5
Drude-Lorentz
0.4
1 material
u
0.3

0.2
v
0.1
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Figure 5: (left) The S-parameters of the optimized material compared to the S-parameters of the element unit cell. (right) The bulk material model as a unit cell.

Figure 6: Substitution of metamaterial with Drude-Lorentz bulk material in a wedge horn.

CST AG WHITEPAPER MODELING AND SIMULATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED DEVICES FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
To find the value of these parameters, an automotive optimi-
zation is then carried out in order to “fit” the Drude-Lorentz
parameters. The S-parameters calculated for the unit cell
are used as the goal of the optimization. The optimizer then
searches the parameter space for the combination of values
in the Drude-Lorentz model that best replicates the behaviour
of the unit cell, by iteratively simulating the material and
tweaking the variables. (Figure 5)
The bulk material can then be substituted into the full-sized
structure (Figure 6) to allow the behavior of the device to
simulated efficiently (Figure 7). Replacing the detailed model
with the bulk material can reduce the number of mesh cells
and increase the time step, speeding up the simulation,
but may neglect the contribution of edge effects and inter-
actions with the rest of the structure. For this reason, it is
sometimes worthwhile carrying out a final simulation with
the full detailed model.
Figure 7: Electric field values in the metamaterial wedge lens from Figure 3, (top) in the double-positive region and (bottom) in the double-negative region.
5
For a standard metamaterial-based device, individual ele-
ments can be a fraction of a wavelength in size, while the
device itself is many times larger. This means that a very
fine but very large mesh is required to accurately model the
system. The time domain solver with hexahedral meshing
can deal with these large, complex structures in an efficient
way, especially when used together with high-performance
computing techniques such as GPU computing or MPI cluster
2
computing. The time solver calculates a wide range of field
results, including the near-field behavior in both the time
and frequency domains, the farfield and phase center of the
device and its transmission and reflection coefficients.
CST AG WHITEPAPER MODELING AND SIMULATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED DEVICES FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS 6

Conclusion References

Developing a metamaterial for a particular application A. Ciccomancini Scogna, “Electromagnetic Bandgap

1

requires careful choice of the type and dimensions of
each element. With electromagnetic simulation using
CST STUDIO SUITE, the behavior of a potential metamaterial
can be investigated prior to the prototyping stage. This makes
it possible to extract the properties of a given design and to
optimize the element for better performance. Metamaterials
can be simulated both in isolation and in situ, and depending
on the project requirements, considered either as a bulk ma-
terial or an ensemble of individual elements.
Structures for PPW Noise mitigation in PWR/GND plane
pairs”, DesignCon 2007.
2
F.Hirtenfelder, G.Lubkowski, “3D Field Simulations using FI
Time Domain Technique of Wedge- and Parabolic-Shaped
Left Handed Materials (LHM)”, International Workshop on
Antenna Technology (IWAT) 2007.

Author

Arnab Bhattacharya, Application Engineer, CST AG

About CST

Founded in 1992, CST offers the market’s widest range of
3D electromagnetic field simulation tools through a glob-
al network of sales and support staff and representatives.
CST develops CST STUDIO SUITE, a package of high-per-
formance software for the simulation of electromagnet-
ic fields in all frequency bands, and also sells and sup-
ports complementary third-party products. Its success
is based on a combination of leading edge technology,
a user-friendly interface and knowledgeable support
staff. CST’s customers are market leaders in industries
as diverse as telecommunications, defense, automotive,
electronics and healthcare. Today, the company enjoys a
leading position in the high-frequency 3D EM simulation
market and employs 250 sales, development, and sup-
port personnel around the world.
CST  STUDIO SUITE is the culmination of many years of
research and development into the most accurate and
efficient computational solutions for electromagnetic
designs. From static to optical, and from the nanoscale to
the electrically large, CST STUDIO SUITE includes tools for
the design, simulation and optimization of a wide range
of devices. Analysis is not limited to pure EM, but can also
include thermal and mechanical effects and circuit simu-
lation. CST STUDIO SUITE can offer considerable product
to market advantages such as shorter development cycles,
virtual prototyping before physical trials, and optimiza-
tion instead of experimentation.
Further information about CST is available on the web at
https://www.cst.com

Trademarks

CST, CST STUDIO SUITE, CST MICROWAVE STUDIO, CST EM STUDIO, CST PARTICLE STUDIO, CST CABLE STUDIO, CST PCB STUDIO, CST MPHYSICS STUDIO, CST MICROSTRIPES,

CST DESIGN STUDIO, CST BOARDCHECK, PERFECT BOUNDARY APPROXIMATION (PBA), and the CST logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CST in North America,

the European Union, and other countries. Other brands and their products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be noted as such.

CST – Computer Simulation Technology AG, Bad Nauheimer Str. 19, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany