Active Terahertz Metamaterial for Biomedical Applications

This book describes a metamaterial-based active absorber for potential biomedical engineering applications. Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is an important tool for imaging in the field of biomedical engineering, due to the non-invasive, non-ionizing nature of terahertz radiation coupled with its propagation characteristics in water, which allows the operator to obtain high-contrast images of skin cancers, burns, etc. without detrimental effects. In order to tap this huge potential, it is important to build highly efficient biomedical imaging systems by introducing terahertz absorbers into biomedical detectors. The biggest challenge faced in the fulfilment of this objective is the lack of naturally occurring dielectrics, which is overcome with the use of artificially engineered resonant materials, viz. metamaterials. This book describes such a metamaterial-based active absorber. The design has been optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO), eventually resulting in an ultra-thin active terahertz absorber. The absorber shows near unity absorption for a tuning range of terahertz (THz) application.

Dr. Balamati Choudhury is currently working as a Scientist at Centre for Electromagnetics of CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, India since April 2008. She obtained her M.Tech. (ECE) degree in 2006 and Ph.D. (Engg.) degree in Microwave Engineering from Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), Rourkela, Orissa, India in 2013. During the period of 2006-2008, she was a Senior Lecturer in Department of Electronics and Communication at NIST, Orissa India. Her active areas of research interests are in the domain of soft computing techniques in electromagnetics, computational electromagnetics for aerospace applications and metamaterial design applications. She was also the recipient of the CSIR-NAL Young Scientist Award for the year 2013-2014 for her contribution in the area of Computational Electromagnetics for Aerospace Applications. She has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific research papers and technical reports including a book and three book chapters. Dr. Balamati is also an Assistant Professor of AcSIR, New Delhi.

Ms. Arya Menon has obtained her Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal University. During the course of her studies, she interned at the Centre for Electromagnetics, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), and worked on soft computing for electromagnetics, conformal antennas, and metamaterials.

Dr. Rakesh Mohan Jha is currently a Chief Scientist & Head, Centre for Electromagnetics, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. Dr. Jha obtained a dual degree in BE (Hons.) EEE and MSc (Hons.) Physics from BITS, Pilani (Raj.) India, in 1982. He obtained his Ph.D. (Engg.) degree from Department of Aerospace Engineering of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1989, in the area of computational electromagnetics for aerospace applications. Dr. Jha was a SERC (UK) Visiting Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Oxford, Department of Engineering Science in 1991. He worked as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for High-Frequency Techniques and Electronics of the University of Karlsruhe, Germany (1992-1993, 1997). He was awarded the Sir C.V. Raman Award for Aerospace Engineering for the Year 1999. Dr. Jha was elected Fellow of INAE in 2010, for his contributions to the EM Applications to Aerospace Engineering. He is also the Fellow of IETE and Distinguished Fellow of ICCES. Dr. Jha has authored or co-authored several books, and more than five hundred scientific research papers and technical reports.