Analysis and design of holographic magnetic metasurfaces in the very near field for sensing applications at quasi-static regime

In this paper, we present a novel low-frequency sensing solution based on the manipulation of the near-field distribution by employing a passive holographic magnetic metasurface, excited by an active RF coil placed in its reactive region. In particular, the sensing capability is based on the interaction between the magnetic field distribution produced by the radiating system and the magneto-dielectric inhomogeneities eventually present within the material under test. We first start from conceiving the geometrical set-up of the metasurface and its driving RF coil, adopting a low operative frequency (specifically 3 MHz) to consider a quasi-static regime and able to increase the penetration depth within the sample. Afterwards, since the sensing spatial resolution and performance can be modulated by controlling the metasurface properties, the required holographic magnetic field mask, describing the ideal distribution at a specific plane, is designed. Then, the amplitude and phase of currents, flowing in each metasurface unit-cell and required to synthetize the field mask, are determined through an optimization technique. Next, the capacitive loads necessary to accomplish the planned behavior are retrieved, by exploiting the metasurface impedance matrix. Finally, experimental measurements conducted on fabricated prototypes validated the numerical results, confirming the efficacy of the proposed approach to detect inhomogeneities in a medium with a magnetic inclusion in a non-destructive manner. The findings show that holographic magnetic metasurfaces operating in the quasi-static regime can be successfully employed for non-destructive sensing, both in industrial and biomedical fields, despite the extremely low frequencies.