Numerical demonstrations of thermally tunable metamaterials based on liquid metals

In this paper, a tunable metamaterial is proposed based on the thermal-sensitivity Hg liquid metals. The Hg packaged in the glass tube by 3-D printing technique is designed to form the basic unit of the tunable metamaterial. The electric length of the metamaterial unit will be altered with the changes of the surrounding temperature, and as a result the resonance response and negative refractive index of the metamaterial will be changed accordingly. Theoretical analysis on the thermally tunable Hg-metamaterial will be presented. The numerical demonstrations of the Hg-metamaterial unit will be performed to validate the proposed design. Finally, a performance enhanced design is proposed to achieve higher temperature sensing precision.