Design and Analysis of MEMS-Based Metamaterials

Metamaterials, materials that are constructed with arrays of small elements have sig-nificant potential to provide material properties that are useful for electromagnetic applications but are not found in nature. Slight changes to a repeated unit cell can be used to tune the effective bulk material properties of a metamaterial, replacing the need to discover suitable materials for an application with the ability to design a structure for the desired effect. However, most current metamaterial realizations are plagued by high loss, large size, awkward structure, or difficult construction. The use of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to create a new metamaterial could improve upon some of these shortcomings due to their small size, high Q, and ease of integration into standard applications and circuit fabrication techniques. In this thesis, I analyze the prospects of a MEMS-based metamaterial. First, I determine the best type of MEMS resonator to use in a metamaterial. Then, I build models that can accurately describe a metamaterial constructed of MEMS unit cells. Analysis of these models provides information about the potential behavior of a MEMS metama