Thermal tunability in terahertz metamaterials fabricated on strontium titanate single-crystal substrates

We report an experimental demonstration of thermal tuning of resonance frequency in a planar terahertz metamaterial consisting of a gold split-ring resonator array fabricated on a bulk single-crystal strontium titanate (SrTiO3) substrate. Cooling the metamaterial starting from 409K down to 150K causes about a 43% shift in resonance frequency, and there is very little variation in resonance strength. The resonance shift is due to the temperature-dependent dielectric constant of the strontium titanate. The experiment opens up avenues for designing tunable terahertz devices by exploiting the temperature-sensitive characteristic of high dielectric constant substrates and complex metal oxide materials. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America