Active control of near-field coupling in conductively coupled microelectromechanical system metamaterial devices

We experimentally report a structurally reconfigurable metamaterial for active switching of near-field coupling in conductively coupled, orthogonally twisted split ring resonators (SRRs) operating in the terahertz spectral region. Out-of-plane reconfigurable microcantilevers integrated into the dark SRR geometry are used to provide active frequency tuning of dark SRR resonance. The geometrical parameters of individual SRRs are designed to have identical inductive-capacitive resonant frequency. This allows for the excitation of classical analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) due to the strong conductive coupling between the SRRs. When the microcantilevers are curved up, the resonant frequency of dark SRR blue-shifts and the EIT peak is completely modulated while the SRRs are still conductively connected. EIT modulation contrast of similar to 50% is experimentally achieved with actively switchable group delay of similar to 2.5 ps. Electrical control, miniaturized size, and readily integrable fabrication process of the proposed structurally reconfigurable metamaterial make it an ideal candidate for the realization of various terahertz communication devices such as electrically controllable terahertz delay lines, buffers, and tunable data-rate channels. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.