Design and Fabrication of Low-Cost Inkjet-Printed Metamaterials

We consider three-dimensional metamaterials involving split-ring resonators (SRRs) that are produced by using low-cost inkjet printing. Following their three-dimensional computational simulations, sensitivity analysis is applied on SRR arrays in order to evaluate their tolerance to various fabrication errors. We use silver-based inks in standard commercial printers in order to fabricate SRRs and their arrays. Measurements demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating very low-cost three-dimensional metamaterials using simple inkjet printing.