Modeling and experimental verification of optical materials formed by stacked nanostrips

The effective plasma frequency fp of periodic metallic wires whose characteristic dimensions are comparable to their skin depth has been analyzed. And a relevant analytic model is constructed by considering the skin effect and making a reasonable shape approximation, which is suitable for the case that the cross section of the wire is noncircular. To verify this model, a wires array with rectangle cross section is designed and the corresponding stacked Au-SiO(2) nanostrips are fabricated. The experimental and simulational transmittances of the metamaterial have been evaluated with a good agreement, although the presence of quartz substrate and structural imperfections in experiment will have an impact, which validates that the multilayer Au-SiO(2) nanostrips could function similarly to a natural bulk metal with discrepancies of fp values less than 8%. It could be confirmed that the theoretic formula is trustworthy in predicting fp for designing and realizing a controllable artificial metal in optical region.