A tunable THz absorber consisting of an elliptical graphene disk array

A Review: The Functional Materials-Assisted Terahertz Metamaterial Absorbers and Polarization Converters

When metamaterial structures meet functional materials, what will happen? The recent rise of the combination of metamaterial structures and functional materials opens new opportunities for dynamic manipulation of terahertz wave. The optical responses of functional materials are greatly improved based on the highly-localized structures in metamaterials, and the properties of metamaterials can in turn be manipulated in a wide dynamic range based on the external stimulation. In the topical review, we summarize the recent progress of the functional materials-based metamaterial structures for flexible control of the terahertz absorption and polarization conversion. The reviewed devices include but are not limited to terahertz metamaterial absorbers with different characteristics, polarization converters, wave plates, and so on. We review the dynamical tunable metamaterial structures based on the combination with functional materials such as graphene, vanadium dioxide (VO2) and Dirac semimetal (DSM) under various external stimulation. The faced challenges and future prospects of the related researches will also be discussed in the end.

Ultrawideband Terahertz Absorber with Dielectric Cylinders Loaded Patterned Graphene Structure

In this paper, we theoretically designed and numerically analyzed an ultrabroadband meta-absorber with near unity absorptivity that works in terahertz spectrum. A wideband meta-absorber composed of bilayer patterned graphene and dielectric cylinder array with high symmetry was proposed. The wideband absorption mechanism benefited from two aspects. The first one was enhanced surface plasmons based on bilayer patterned graphene. And the second one was the coupling of continuous resonant modes within Fabry-Perot cavities to the enhanced surface plasmons in the graphene. An ultrawide bandwidth with absorptivity over 90% were obtained from 3.2 THz to 9.4 THz. Simulated results showed that the proposed ultra-wideband absorbing structure also possessed high performance of polarization independence, flexible tunability, large incident angle insensitivity, and compact fabrication.

Polarization-Insensitive Broadband THz Absorber Based on Circular Graphene Patches

A polarization-insensitive broadband terahertz absorber based on single-layer graphene metasurface has been designed and simulated, in which the graphene metasurface is composed of isolated circular patches. After simulation and optimization, the absorption bandwidth of this absorber with more than 90% absorptance is up to 2 THz. The simulation results demonstrate that the broadband absorption can be achieved by combining the localized surface plasmon (LSP) resonances on the graphene patches and the resonances caused by the coupling between them. The absorption bandwidth can be changed by changing the chemical potential of graphene and the structural parameters. Due to the symmetrical configuration, the proposed absorber is completely insensitive to polarization and have the characteristics of wide angle oblique incidence that they can achieve broadband absorption with 70% absorptance in the range of incident angle from 0° to 50° for both TE and TM polarized waves. The flexible and simple design, polarization insensitive, wide-angle incident, broadband and high absorption properties make it possible for our proposed absorber to have promising applications in terahertz detection, imaging and cloaking objects.

Dynamically tunable directional subwavelength beam propagation based on photonic spin Hall effect in graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterials

Photonic spin Hall effect (PSHE) of type II hyperbolic metamaterials is achieved due to near filed interference, which provides a way to decide the propagation direction of subwavelength beam. In this paper, we propose graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterials (GHMMs), which is composed of the alternating graphene/SiO₂ multilayer. The numerical results show that when a dipole emitter is placed at the boundary of the GHMMs, the subwavelength beam with λ/40 full-with half maximum can be excited and propagates along the left or right channel, which is dependent on polarization handedness. In addition, we further demonstrate that the unidirectional propagation angle can be dynamically tuned by changing the external electric field bias applied to graphene.

Graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterials for a tunable subwavelength dark hollow beam

Hyperbolic metamaterials have recently been widely investigated in nanophotonics systems. Here, we propose an alternating graphene/${{\rm SiO}_2}$SiO₂ multilayer structure as an anisotropic medium with hyperbolic dispersion. When in-plane and out-of-plane effective permittivity is negative and positive, respectively, the incident beam (transverse magnetic polarization wave) can be split into two subwavelength beams, and a dark hollow beam can be achieved for circularly polarized incidence. Also, the size of the dark hollow beam can be tuned by changing the Fermi level. Our method is believed to be used as a tunable optical tweezer for controlling molecules.

Numerical Study of Angle-Insensitive and Tunable Dual-Band THz Absorber Using Periodic Cross-Shaped Graphene Arrays

A dual-band terahertz (THz) absorber using the periodic cross-shaped graphene arrays is presented. It is shown that the dual-band light absorption enhancement of graphene results from the edge graphene plasmon (EGP) resonance, and the locations of the two absorption peaks can be precisely estimated by using the Fabry-Pérot (F-P) cavity model. Slight residual reflection remains at the two absorption peaks because the input impedance of the cross-arm cannot be perfectly matched with the free space impedance. In addition, the locations of the two absorption bands can be simultaneously tuned by changing the Fermi level of graphene, and they can be independently tuned by changing the width or the length of the cross-arm of graphene. Excellent angle-insensitivity dual-band absorption enhancement of graphene can be maintained for both the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations.

Graphene surface plasmon off-axis superlens based on tilted one-dimensional Si/SiO2 gratings

Graphene surface plasmon (GSP) superlenses, induced from the negative refraction, have recently been demonstrated in various two-dimensional photonic crystal systems. However, inplane GSP superlenses have never been reported in a one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystal system. Here, we propose a graphene-Si/SiO₂ system, by transferring a graphene sheet on the tilted 1D subwavelength silicon/silica gratings. By discussing the dispersion relations of the inplane GSP in this system, the GSP negative refraction is found in the mid-infrared region. When the tilted angle, working wavelength, and Fermi level are set to be 60°, 11.22 μm, and 0.2 eV, respectively, the off-axis subwavelength focusing has the best resolution, and the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the image is 0.0091λ (102.1 nm). Further, we investigate the effects of the Fermi level on the superlens frequency range, and the image's FWHM, the broadband, and the deep subwavelength superlens are achieved. The full-wave numerical simulations are conducted by the finite element method. Our findings can be applied to the manipulation of inplane GSP propagation and biological imaging.