Terahertz wavefront control by tunable metasurface made of graphene ribbons

We propose a tunable metasurface consisting of an array of graphene ribbons on a silver mirror with a SiO2 gap layer to control reflected wavefront at terahertz frequencies. The graphene ribbons exhibit localized plasmon resonances depending on their Fermi levels to introduce abrupt phase shifts along the metasurface. With interference of the Fabry-Perot resonances in the SiO2 layer, phase shift through the system is largely accumulated, covering the 0-to-2 pi range for full control of the wavefront. Numerical simulations prove that wide-angle beam steering up to 53 degrees with a high reflection efficiency of 60% is achieved at 5 THz within a switching time shorter than 0.6 ps. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.