Rotationally reconfigurable metamaterials based on moire phenomenon

Exploiting moire interference, we make a new type of reconfigurable metamaterials and study their transmission tunability for incident electromagnetic waves. The moire pattern is formed by overlapping two transparent layers, each of which has a periodic metallic pattern, and the cluster size of the resulting moire pattern can be varied by changing the relative superposition angle of the two layers. In our reconfigurable metamaterials, both the size and structural shape of the unit cell can be varied simultaneously through moire interference. We show that the transmission of electromagnetic waves can be controlled from 90% to 10% at 11 GHz by experiments and numerical simulation. The reconfigurable metamaterial proposed here can be applied in bandpass filters and tunable modulation devices. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America