Frequency-dependent transmission-type digital coding metasurface controlled by light intensity

A great challenge with metasurfaces is tunability for tailoring electromagnetic waves dynamically. Metasurfaces designed digitally, also known as digital coding metasurfaces, provide a low-overhead strategy for constructing controllable or even programmable metasurfaces. However, most reported digital metasurfaces have been single-band ones of the reflection type that have been realized by controlling the phase response of the digital elements. This study reports on a light-controllable and frequency-dependent digital coding metasurface that allows wave transmission to be manipulated more freely and flexibly. By remotely tuning the illumination intensity or shifting the frequency of the incident waves, the transmission response of the designed digital elements can be tuned dynamically. The proposed device is assessed experimentally at microwave frequencies. The presented transmissive digital metasurface offers unprecedented opportunities to produce reconfigurable devices that are controlled in multiple ways with a single design. Published by AIP Publishing.