Excitation of trapped modes from a metasurface composed of only Z-shaped meta-atoms

A printed planar Z-shaped meta-atom has recently been proposed as an alternative design to the conventional electric-LC resonator for achieving negative permittivity. Transforming the LC topology of the resonator helps to facilitate transposition of geometrical parameters for the optical regime and also to improve the metamaterial homogeneity. In this work, we discuss about the excitation of a dark or trapped mode in such Z-shaped meta-atom. The electromagnetic behavior of the meta-atom has been investigated through both simulations and experiments in the microwave regime. Our results show that the Z meta-atom exhibits a trapped mode resonance. Depending on the orientation of the polarized electromagnetic field with respect to the Z atom topology and the incident plane, the excitation of the dark mode can lead either to a narrowband resonance in reflection or to a very asymmetric Fano-like resonance in transmission, analog of electromagnetically induced transparency. Compared to other structures, the Z meta-atom presents the advantage of having the dark mode resonance spectrally spaced with respect to the bright mode resonances, which could simplify the observation of the dark mode at much shorter wavelengths.