Nested structures approach in designing an isotropic negative-index material for infrared

We propose a new generic approach for designing isotropic metamaterial with nested cubic structures. As an example, a three-dimensional isotropic unit cell design Split Cube in Cage (SCiC) is shown to exhibit an effective negative refractive index on infrared wavelengths. We report on the refractive index reaching -2.3 and the figure of merit as high as 2.7. The structure exhibits potential for application as a building block of isotropic negative-index materials. [DOI: 10.2971/jeos.2009.09003]