Reflective Terahertz Metasurfaces Based on Non-Volatile Phase Change Material for Switchable Manipulation

Recently, metasurfaces have been investigated and exploited for various applications in the THz regime, including modulators and detectors. However, the responsive properties of the metasurface in THz stay fixed once the fabrication process is complete. This limitation can be modified when integrating the phase change material (PCM), whose states are switchable between crystalline and amorphous, into the metasurface structure. This characteristic of the PCM is appealing in achieving dynamic and customizable functionality. In this work, the reflective metasurface structure is designed as a hexagonal unit deposited on a polyimide substrate. The non-volatile PCM chosen for the numerical study is germanium antimony tellurium (GST). Our proposed phase change metasurface provides two resonant frequencies located at 1.72 and 2.70 THz, respectively; one of them shows a high contrast of reflectivity at almost 80%. The effects of geometrical parameters, incident angles, and polarization modes on the properties of the proposed structure are explored. Finally, the performances of the structure are evaluated in terms of the insertion loss and extinction ratio.

Automated summary

Recent research has shown that integrating phase change materials into metasurface structures can modify their responsive properties in the THz regime, allowing for dynamic and customizable functionality.