Plasmon coupling in vertical split-ring resonator metamolecules

The past decade has seen a number of interesting designs proposed and implemented to generate artificial magnetism at optical frequencies using plasmonic metamaterials, but owing to the planar configurations of typically fabricated metamolecules that make up the metamaterials, the magnetic response is mainly driven by the electric field of the incident electromagnetic wave. We recently fabricated vertical split-ring resonators (VSRRs) which behave as magnetic metamolecules sensitive to both incident electric and magnetic fields with stronger induced magnetic dipole moment upon excitation in comparison to planar SRRs. The fabrication technique enabled us to study the plasmon coupling between VSRRs that stand up side by side where the coupling strength can be precisely controlled by varying the gap in between. The resulting wide tuning range of these resonance modes offers the possibility of developing frequency selective functional devices such as sensors and filters based on plasmon coupling with high sensitivity.