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Abstract This thesis starts with a review of different definitions of metamaterials along with their development and their state of art. This is followed by choosing a specific application, which is a carbon dioxide optical gas sensor. The sensor is studied in detail in addition to studying the effect of using optical metamaterials instead of conventional metal layers that are usually used for this specific application. Among several optical gas sensor structures, a prism based optical gas sensor is chosen; that is a prism coated with a plasmonic or a metal nano-layer. This structure is chosen for its relatively compact size as well as higher sensitivity in addition to its not being affected by fluctuations in input power. The theory of operation of the sensor mentioned above is based upon the presence of a certain angle of incidence at which the input incident power on the structure is absorbed through the plasmon layer coated to the prism. That is when a beam is incident with different angles on one face of the prism coated with a plasmonic layer, along with measuring the reflected power from the other face of the prism, a reflectivity curve is obtained. This curve is characterized with a sharp dip at a specific angle known as surface plasmon resonance angle. This angle varies with the concentration of the gas to be sensed. Thus, to analyze the performance of such a structure, field analysis technique is used in order to compute the reflectivity and how it changes with different gas concentrations. |