A metamaterial based on coupled metallic nanoparticles and its band-gap property.

The properties of an ensemble of densely packed metallic nanoparticles and the effective material properties of a metamaterial based on them are studied in detail using rigorous diffraction theory. We show that in the spectral vicinity of the plasmon resonance, the metamaterial shows a well-defined Lorentzian resonance in its effective permittivity whereas the permeability is unaltered. The metamaterial shows a stop band in the spectral domain where the real part of the effective permittivity is negative. Modifying the effective properties of the metamaterial allows efficient tuning of the band-gap properties. The implementation of the proposed approach towards a band-gap metamaterial employing self-organization in liquid crystals is discussed.