Effects of manufacturing tolerances on the performance of metamaterial microwave anti-reflection coatings

Abstract

Metamaterial anti-reflection coatings (ARC) are used in a variety of applications, including: lenses, filters, and absorbers. Typically, the design of a given ARC is done within an infinite medium approximation, which presupposes that every unit cell on the interface is identical. However, in realistic applications, the geometry of a given ARC usually has some degree of variability, be it due to the shape of the surface inherent to the application, like in a lens, or manufacturing tolerances. This variation may alter the performance of the optical element in unanticipated ways, by creating additional scattering, enabling diffractive maxima that would normally be absent and, most crucially, changing the transparency of the ARC as a function of frequency. In this work we utilize full-wave modeling of finite samples of plastic which are matched with free space using a metamaterial ARC on both of their interfaces. By adding a degree of randomness to the ARC geometry we attempt to characterize the extent to which a given variation affects the expected performance of an ARC.