Role of ferrites in negative index metamaterials

Metamaterial composites consisting of copper wires and yttrium iron garnet (YIG) slabs have been theoretically studied using the transfer function matrix technique and predictions of electromagnetic scatterings have been compared well with experiments. An array of copper wires (without ferrite) showed plasma-like behavior in the calculation and was confirmed experimentally. The addition of a YIG slab demonstrated the effect of negative index. We believe that such a ferrite-wire metamaterial should provide low-loss and tunable negative index media (NIM) structures.