A Double-Metallic-Layered Huygens’ Surface for
Broadband and Highly Efficient Beam Refractions
Zheng-Bin Wang,
1,2
Manlin Xue,
1
Huamei Zhang,
1
Zhihang Wu,
1
Bo Li
1,2
1
College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Nanjing 210096, China
Received 12 December 2015; accepted 22 February 2016
ABSTRACT: In this article, a double-metallic-layered Huygens’ surface Huygens’ surface
that efficiently refracts normally incident electromagnetic waves at the telecommunication
frequency of 25 GHz is reported. The phase gradient along the interface is controlled by a
series of isotropic, nonresonant, spatial phase shifters with dimensions of 0.5k
0
3 0.5k
0
,
where k
0
is the free-space wavelength at 25 GHz. The electric and magnetic responses of
the unit cells are controlled by metallic patterns etched on both sides of an ultrathin dielec-
tric substrate (with thickness of 0.07k
0
). These surface microstructures are shown to be able
to fabricate high-efficiency refract-arrays, ultrathin, wideband focusing lenses. The full-
wave simulations demonstrate their excellent performances in manipulating electromagnetic
wavefronts. The measured results for the fabricated refract-array further show that it can
refract normally incident waves to the predefined angle, and the peak value of the transmis-
sion efficiency approaches 76%.
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C
2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE
26:449–455, 2016.
Keywords: Huygens’ surface; phase gradient; refraction; planar lens
I. INTRODUCTION
Metasurfaces are electrically thin sheets composed of sub-
wavelength meta-atoms, which can modulate the phase
and amplitude of each Huygens’ secondary source on the
interface, and in turn manipulate the transmitted electro-
magnetic (EM) wavefronts. Compared with its traditional
counterparts—bulk metamaterials, metasurfaces take up
less physical space, have less propagation loss and sim-
plify fabrication processes [1–4]. In the past few years,
they have been intensively studied throughout the micro-
wave, terahertz (THz), and optical bands in applications
such as deflection/refraction surfaces [4–6], ultrathin
focusing lenses [7–9], high-gain beam-steerable antenna
arrays [10–12], and near-field modulating plates [13–15].
Most of the reported metasurface designs resorted to some
microscopic resonators, such as V-shaped antennas [7, 8,
15], H-shaped antennas [5] and dipole antennas [16, 17].
These engineering skills are based on the mechanism of
electrical resonance and polarization rotation, which
restricts their transmission efficiency (on the order of 5%)
and operating bandwidth. In 2013, C. Pfeiffer et al. [6]
fabricated the first refracting Huygens’ metasurface, which
is composed of a vertical stack of 58 identical circuit
board strips. This surface introduces both the electric and
magnetic responses, and can realize 24.2% half-powered
bandwidth and 86% peak efficiency at the center fre-
quency 10.5 GHz. In the same year, F. Monticone, et al.,
[18] applied the optical nanocircuit concepts to design a
triple-layered metascreen, which is made of plasmonic
(aluminum-doped zinc oxide) and dielectric (silicon)
materials, and can realize high-efficiency (more than
75%) transmission. More recently, C. Pfeiffer et al. [19]
further presented a triple-layered metasurface that can
efficiently bend light by cascading three patterned metallic
sheets. The peak value of the transmission efficiency
approaches 30%.
In this work, we first propose a series of isotropic, sub-
wavelength unit cells that have metallic patterns etched
on both sides of an ultrathin dielectric substrate. Besides
electric polarization currents, the equivalent magnetic
Correspondence to: Z.-B. Wang; e-mail: wangzb@njupt.edu.
cn.
DOI: 10.1002/mmce.20988
Published online 7 March 2016 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com).
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