Reliability of Split Ring Resonators in a High Power Plasma Environment

Abstract Metamaterials have been a significant branch in the materials sciences because of the performance which cannot be found in nature. In order for better adaptation, plasma was recently proposed as an ingredient contributing negative permittivity in a customized frequency range. Plasmas generated by split ring resonators (SRR) have the potential of altering the overall resonator impedance; however, there are challenges with plasma induced damage within in the ring gap. A protective method is proposed in this article which improves the SRR reliability by extending the duration of plasma working from less than 10 min with an input power of 300 W to more than 5 h with the input power elevated to 1 kW. This improvement is corroborated by microstructural analysis showing that the gap region of the SRR is protected by a dielectric layer.