Coding metasurface has attracted much attention due to its flexible design of coding sequences and powerful control ability of light beams. However, the traditional coding metasurfaces with pin-diode switches between two metallic patches are usually used in the microwave band. Few studies have been carried out in the terahertz (THz) region with tunable metastructures. In order to realize the dynamic modulation of terahertz metasurface, in this paper we use the phase change material vanadium dioxide (VO2) to activate modulation coding metasurface in the terahertz band. We designed a VO2 embedded hybrid structure with metallic patches as the metasurface unit, which can produce a 180- degree phase change near 0.69 THz during the phase transition of VO2 from an insulating state to the metallic state. Meanwhile, we have constructed a metasurface array with the above designed tunable VO2 components and non-tunable metallic units to realize the dynamic switching of the far-field beam at that frequency. Our simulated results indicate that when the VO2 conductivity increases from 200 to 200000 S/m, the far-field reflected beams of the metasurface array can change from the separation of about 41° apart to close together. Notably, this coding metasurface will remain the reflectivity higher than 0.76 at the working frequency and exhibit polarization insensitive feature to the incident light. The active coding metasurface we designed provides a new idea for flexible beam control and has broad application prospects in terahertz functional devices.
Metamaterials are artificial materials with unique electromagnetic properties and could exhibit a strong electromagnetic resonance. Resonant metamaterials are widely used in the field of biosensors because they are sensitive to the changes of surface dielectric environment. In this study, we demonstrated a highly sensitive detection method of 4-Mercaptohydrocinnamic acid using terahertz metamaterials fabricated on silicon substrate with metal arrays of the three bars structure. We measured the transmission spectra of the metamaterial to detect the 4-Mercaptohydrocinnamic acid at three different densities by the terahertz time-domain spectroscopy system. With the density of 4-Mercaptohydrocinnamic acid increasing, resonance dips exhibit the red-shift phenomena and transmission at the resonance frequency simultaneously reduce. The movement of resonance dips and the change of transmission show that the three bars resonators are sensitive to the density of analyte. The finite-difference time-domain simulation shows a good agreement with the experimental data, and the simulation of surface current and electric field distributions at resonance dips can further understand the resonance modes in transmission spectra. Our study provides new prospect into the application of terahertz metamaterials in biosensing.
Graphene, made of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, has already attracted intense research and commercial interest in recent years. Early research focused on its remarkable electronic properties, such as the observation of massless Dirac fermions and the half-integer quantum Hall effect. Now graphene is finding application in touch-screen displays, as channels in high-frequency transistors and in graphene-based integrated circuits. The unique properties of graphene have also attracted various researches on carrier dynamics using THz spectroscopy. Here we present an experimental demonstration of monolayer CVD grown graphene via THz time-domain spectroscopy, as well as optical pump terahertz probe system. We observe that the maximum transmittance of the graphene is nearly 96% compared to the ambient signal. However, under the excitation of different optical pump fluences, it is found that unlike the semiconductor material, its transmitted amplitude is enhanced accordingly. We observed a wide-band modulation of the terahertz transmission at the range of 0.3-1.6 THz and a large modulation depth of 16.4% with a certain optical excitation. We attributed it to suppression of the air-adsorbed graphene photoconductivity due to an increase in the carrier scattering rate induced by the increase in the free-carrier concentration by photoexcitation. The obtained results not only highlight the influence of air conditions on how THz characterizations would guide the design and fabrication of graphene-based terahertz modulators and optoelectronic devices, but also show that graphene exhibits the potential for terahertz broadband transmission enhancement with photoexcitation.
In recent years, terahertz metamaterials have attracted extensive attention because of their high sensitivity to electromagnetic waves in biosensing application. In order to obtain high-quality factor resonance, we designed and fabricated single split-ring structures with the radius of 25.5 μm. In the experiment, we measured the terahertz transmission spectra when the angle between the open gap direction and the incident wave horizontal polarization is set to be 0, 30, 45, 60 and 90 degrees, respectively, and compared the effects of different angles on the transmission characteristics. With the increase of the rotation angle, the frequency of sharpest resonance dip in the terahertz transmission spectra has a remarkable blue-shift. Furthermore, we further simulated the polarization conversion characteristics of the single splitting rings with different rotation angles. It is found that there is no polarization conversion effect when the sample is placed at 0 and 90 degrees. When the sample is rotated by 30 degrees, 45 degrees and 60 degrees, polarization conversion is observed, with the highest conversion efficiency at 45 degrees. Our obtained results indicate that the terahertz metamaterials have great application prospects in biosensors.
In recent years, terahertz metamaterials have attracted great attention due to their widely application in frequency selector, filter, and other optical devices. Vanadium dioxide as the promising thermal memory material, has been used in making terahertz modulation device because of its well-known insulator-to-metal transition triggered by thermal, optical, and electrical. Here, we designed a composite metamaterial with three rings structure, where outer and inner rings are set to be ideal metallic gold and the middle ring is replaced by VO2. Using finite-difference time-domain method, we theoretically studied the variety of THz transmitted spectra during the insulator-to-metal transition of VO2 and its influence on the resonance coupling effect. When VO2 is in insulating phase, there are two resonant dips in spectrum. However, as VO2 undergoes an insulator-to-metal transition, the low-frequency resonance gradually moves to high frequency and finally splits into two. Our obtained results indicate the reversible terahertz modulation can be achieved by combining metamaterials with phase transition material.
Metamaterials are artificial materials with unique electromagnetic properties not found in nature and could exhibit a strong electromagnetic resonance with frequency. These characteristics depending on the geometry, dimensions, compositions of the structure, and even the symmetry. In this study, we demonstrated a highly sensitive detection method of glycerol-water solutions using terahertz metamaterials fabricated on silicon substrate with metal arrays of the asymmetric double split-ring resonator structure. We measured the transmitted spectra of the metamaterial to detect the water-glycerol solutions at different concentrations by the terahertz time-domain spectroscopy system. With the increasing of glycerol concentration, resonant dips of metamaterial exhibit the blue-shift phenomena and transmittance at the resonance frequency simultaneously enhance. The movement of resonant dips and the change of transmittance shows that these resonators are sensitive to the variation of glycerol concentration. The finite-difference time-domain simulation agree well with the experimental data, and the simulation of surface current and electric field distribution at resonance dips can further understand the resonance modes in transmission spectra. Our study provides new prospect into the application of terahertz metamaterials in detecting glycerol proportions of solution.
Recently, the terahertz biosensors based on metamaterials have attracted much attention due to the fact that metamaterials are sensitive to the local enhancement of electromagnetic field and the changes of the surrounding dielectric environment. In order to obtain the resonances with the high quality factor for biosensing, here we designed, simulated, and fabricated the metamaterial structures composed of a series of the asymmetric “double” circular arc (DASR) structures. The experimental data show there are three sharp resonance dips named Fano resonance in the terahertz transmission spectra. In the previous study of asymmetric double rings, we studied the effect of different cutting widths on the transmission characteristics of terahertz when the samples were placed at 0 degrees. Here, the spectral characteristics and polarization conversion characteristics of the samples after 90 degrees were studied. We found that when the sample rotated by 90 degrees only two resonance dips exist in the transmission spectrum. As the separation of asymmetric arcs gradually increases, two resonance frequencies also show blue-shift. To further analyze the reasons for the changes in the transmission spectrum at different angles of sample placement, we present the surface currents and the electromagnetic field distributions in those structures. Our obtained results indicate the terahertz metamaterial has great potential in application of biosensing field.
The spectral characteristics of the asymmetric double-wire structures have been investigated in the terahertz (THz) range. Based on the THz time-domain spectroscopy system, the spectral of the samples has been measured. It is shown that a transparent peak appears in the transmission spectrum which indicate that a resonance coupling exist between the two metal bars. Furthermore, we study the optical modulation properties when the pump light irradiates on the sample by using optical pump-terahertz probe technique (OPTP). The measured results indicate that the pump light can realize an optical switch effect to modulate the transmittance of THz wave. When adjusting the time delay between the optical pump and the terahertz probe pulses, the transmittance of THz wave varies, indicating the photoexcited carriers in the substrate have great influence on the resonance characteristics of the structure. Our obtained results indicate optical modulation method could provide the functionally potential applications in the terahertz modulators and filters.
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