Abstract-An electrically driven terahertz metamaterial diffractive modulator with more than 20 dB of dynamic range

N. Karl¹, K. Reichel¹, H.-T. Chen², A. J. Taylor², I. Brener³, A. Benz³, J. L. Reno³, R. Mendis¹ and D. M. Mittleman¹

 HIDE AFFILIATIONS
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, MS 378, Houston, Texas 77251-1892, USA
2 Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P. O. Box 1663, MS K771, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
3 Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories, P. O. Box 5800, MS 1082, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, USA
Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 091115 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4867276

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/104/9/10.1063/1.4867276

We design and experimentally demonstrate a switchable diffraction grating for terahertz modulation based on planar active metamaterials, where a Schottky gate structure is implemented to tune the metamaterial resonances in real-time via the application of an external voltage bias. The diffraction grating is formed by grouping the active split-ring resonators into an array of independent columns with alternate columns biased. We observe off-axis diffraction over a wide frequency band in contrast to the narrow-band resonances, which permits operation of the device as a relatively high-speed, wide-bandwidth, high-contrast modulator,with more than 20 dB of dynamic range.

© 2014 AIP Publishing LLC