Ultra-thin and light-weight spoof surface plasmon polariton coupler achieved by broadside coupled split ring resonators

Low profile and light weight are very important for practical applications of a spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) coupler, especially at low frequencies. In this paper, we propose and design an ultra-thin, light-weight SSPP coupler based on broadside coupled split ring resonators (BC-SRRs). The size of BC-SRR can be far less than λ/100 and can extremely well control the reflective phases within a subwavelength thickness. Due to the broadside capacitive coupling, the electrical size of BC-SRR is dramatically reduced to guarantee the ultra-thin thickness of the SSPP coupler. The weight of the SSPP coupler is reduced by a low occupation ratio of BC-SRR in the unit cell volume. As an example, a C-band SSPP coupler composed of phase gradient BC-SRRs is designed, fabricated, and measured. Due to the ultra-small size and low occupation ratio of BC-SRRs, the thickness of the coupler is λ/12 and the surface density is only 0.98 kg/m². Both simulation and experiment results verify that the coupler can achieve high-efficiency SPP coupling at 5.27 GHz under normal incidence.