Yijun Feng

Graphene based tunable metamaterial absorber and polarization modulation in terahertz frequency

Graphene can be utilized in designing tunable terahertz devices due to its tunability of sheet conductivity. In this paper, we combine the metamaterial having unit cell of cross-shaped metallic resonator with the double layer graphene wires to realize polarization independent absorber with spectral tuning at terahertz frequency. The absorption performance with a peak frequency tuning range of 15% and almost perfect peak absorption has been demonstrated by controlling the Fermi energy of the graphene that can be conveniently achieved by adjusting the bias voltage on the graphene double layers. The mechanism of the proposed absorber has been explored by a transmission line model and the tuning is explained by the changing of the effective inductance of the graphene wires under gate voltage biasing. Further more, we also propose a polarization modulation scheme of terahertz wave by applying similar polarization dependent absorbers. Through the proposed polarization modulator, it is able to electrically control the reflected wave with a linear polarization of continuously tunable azimuth angle of the major axis from 0° to 90° at the working frequency. These design approaches enable us to electrically control the absorption spectrum and the polarization state of terahertz waves more flexibly.

Geometric phase coded metasurface: from polarization dependent directive electromagnetic wave scattering to diffusion-like scattering

Ultrathin metasurface compromising various sub-wavelength meta-particles offers promising advantages in controlling electromagnetic wave by spatially manipulating the wavefront characteristics across the interface. The recently proposed digital coding metasurface could even simplify the design and optimization procedures due to the digitalization of the meta-particle geometry. However, current attempts to implement the digital metasurface still utilize several structural meta-particles to obtain certain electromagnetic responses, and requiring time-consuming optimization especially in multi-bits coding designs. In this regard, we present herein utilizing geometric phase based single structured meta-particle with various orientations to achieve either 1-bit or multi-bits digital metasurface. Particular electromagnetic wave scattering patterns dependent on the incident polarizations can be tailored by the encoded metasurfaces with regular sequences. On the contrast, polarization insensitive diffusion-like scattering can also been successfully achieved by digital metasurface encoded with randomly distributed coding sequences leading to substantial suppression of backward scattering in a broadband microwave frequency. The proposed digital metasurfaces provide simple designs and reveal new opportunities for controlling electromagnetic wave scattering with or without polarization dependence.

High-order modes of spoof surface plasmonic wave transmission on thin metal film structure

Recently, conformal surface plasmon (CSP) structure has been successfully proposed that could support spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on corrugated metallic strip with ultrathin thickness [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 40-45 (2013)]. Such concept provides a flexible, conformal, and ultrathin wave-guiding element, very promising for application of plasmonic devices, and circuits in the frequency ranging from microwave to mid-infrared. In this work, we investigated the dispersions and field patterns of high-order modes of spoof SPPs along CSP structure of thin metal film with corrugated edge of periodic array of grooves, and carried out direct measurement on the transmission spectrum of multi-band of surface wave propagation at microwave frequency. It is found that the mode number and mode bands are mainly determined by the depth of the grooves, providing a way to control the multi-band transmission spectrum. We have also experimentally verified the high-order mode spoof SPPs propagation on curved CSP structure with acceptable bending loss. The multi-band propagation of spoof surface wave is believed to be applicable for further design of novel planar devices such as filters, resonators, and couplers, and the concept can be extended to terahertz frequency range.

Active impedance metasurface with full 360° reflection phase tuning

Impedance metasurface is composed of electrical small scatters in two dimensional plane, of which the surface impedance can be designed to produce desired reflection phase. Tunable reflection phase can be achieved by incorporating active element into the scatters, but the tuning range of the reflection phase is limited. In this paper, an active impedance metasurface with full 360° reflection phase control is presented to remove the phase tuning deficiency in conventional approach. The unit cell of the metasurface is a multiple resonance structure with two resonance poles and one resonance zero, capable of providing 360° reflection phase variation and active tuning within a finite frequency band. Linear reflection phase tuning can also be obtained. Theoretical analysis and simulation are presented and validated by experiment at microwave frequency. The proposed approach can be applied to many cases where fine and full phase tuning is needed, such as beam steering in reflectarray antennas.

Dynamic control of electromagnetic wave propagation with the equivalent principle inspired tunable metasurface

Transmission and reflection are two fundamental properties of the electromagnetic wave propagation through obstacles. Full control of both the magnitude and phase of the transmission and reflection independently are important issue for free manipulation of electromagnetic wave propagation. Here we employed the equivalent principle, one fundamental theorem of electromagnetics, to analyze the required surface electric and magnetic impedances of a passive metasurface to produce either arbitrary transmission magnitude and phase or arbitrary reflection magnitude and phase. Based on the analysis, a tunable metasurface is proposed. It is shown that the transmission phase can be tuned by 360° with the unity transmissivity or the transmissivity can be tuned from 0 to 1 while the transmission phase is kept around 0°. The reflection magnitude and phase can also been tuned similarly with the proposed metasurface. The proposed design may have many potential applications, such as the dynamic EM beam forming and scanning.

Planar surface plasmonic waveguide devices based on symmetric corrugated thin film structures

Recently, a conformal surface plasmon (CSP) structure has been successfully proposed, which is very promising for application of planar plasmonic devices in the frequency ranging from microwave to mid-infrared [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 40-45 (2013)]. Here we investigated the dispersions and electromagnetic (EM) field patterns of a symmetric CSP structure in which the two sides of the planar metal strip are symmetrically corrugated by groove arrays. The symmetric CSP structure can support both the symmetric mode (even mode) and the anti-symmetric mode (odd mode) of surface wave propagation. Based on the even mode, we analyzed the EM wave coupling between two adjacent symmetry CSP strips, and then designed and analyzed two planar CSP waveguide devices in the terahertz frequency: a frequency splitter and a 3 dB directional coupler. To verify the functionality and performance of these waveguide devices, we scaled down the working frequency to microwave and designed similar devices with scaled geometry. We implemented microwave experiments on the fabricated prototypes, and the tested device performances have clearly validated the functionality of our designs. The symmetric CSP structure is believed to be very applicable in future design of novel planar plasmonic device and circuitry.

Broad band invisibility cloak made of normal dielectric multilayer

We present the design, fabrication, and performance test of a quasi three-dimensional carpet cloak made of normal dielectric in the microwave regime. Taking advantage of a simple linear coordinate transformation, we design a carpet cloak with homogeneous anisotropic medium and then practically realize the device with multilayer of alternating normal dielectric slabs based on the effective medium theory. As a proof-of-concept example, we fabricate the carpet cloak with multilayer of FR4 dielectric slabs with air spacing. The performance of the fabricated design is verified through full-wave numerical simulation and measurement of the far-field scattering electromagnetic waves in a microwave anechoic chamber. Experimental results have demonstrated pronounced cloaking effect in a very broad band from 8 GHz to 18 GHz (whole X and Ku band) due to the low loss, non-dispersive feature of the multilayer dielectric structure.

Simplified ground plane invisibility cloak by multilayer dielectrics.

Most implementations of the ground plane invisibility cloak are based on the isotropic design through the quasi-conformal transformation. However recent theoretical analysis predicts the unavoidable lateral shift of the scattering fields associated with these cloaks making them detectable. In this paper, we propose an alternative method to design the ground plane invisibility clock with electromagnetic beam modulation blocks through simple coordinate transformation discussed in our previous work. The ground plane cloak obtained with the rigorous transformation optics possesses moderate anisotropic distributions of material parameters, but results in no lateral shift of the scattering fields. To realize the design, a possible scheme is suggested by discretizing the ground plane cloak to several homogeneous sub-blocks. These sub-blocks can be realized with multilayer isotropic dielectrics with alignment angles that are determined by the effective medium theory. Thus the non-magnetic ground plane invisibility cloak can be constructed by several multilayered normal dielectrics aligned in different angles. The performance of the proposed cloak and its practical implementation is validated by full-wave electromagnetic simulations with both near field distributions and far field scattering patterns under different EM wave incident angles. The proposed cloak is composed of normal dielectric multilayers, thus can leads to easy experimental demonstration of non-magnetic ground plane cloak in the frequency range from microwave to optical.

Broadband diffuse terahertz wave scattering by flexible metasurface with randomized phase distribution.

Suppressing specular electromagnetic wave reflection or backward radar cross section is important and of broad interests in practical electromagnetic engineering. Here, we present a scheme to achieve broadband backward scattering reduction through diffuse terahertz wave reflection by a flexible metasurface. The diffuse scattering of terahertz wave is caused by the randomized reflection phase distribution on the metasurface, which consists of meta-particles of differently sized metallic patches arranged on top of a grounded polyimide substrate simply through a certain computer generated pseudorandom sequence. Both numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate the ultralow specular reflection over a broad frequency band and wide angle of incidence due to the re-distribution of the incident energy into various directions. The diffuse scattering property is also polarization insensitive and can be well preserved when the flexible metasurface is conformably wrapped on a curved reflective object. The proposed design opens up a new route for specular reflection suppression, and may be applicable in stealth and other technology in the terahertz spectrum.

Backward spoof surface wave in plasmonic metamaterial of ultrathin metallic structure

Backward wave with anti-parallel phase and group velocities is one of the basic properties associated with negative refraction and sub-diffraction image that have attracted considerable interest in the context of photonic metamaterials. It has been predicted theoretically that some plasmonic structures can also support backward wave propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), however direct experimental demonstration has not been reported, to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, a specially designed plasmonic metamaterial of corrugated metallic strip has been proposed that can support backward spoof SPP wave propagation. The dispersion analysis, the full electromagnetic field simulation and the transmission measurement of the plasmonic metamaterial waveguide have clearly validated the backward wave propagation with dispersion relation possessing negative slope and opposite directions of group and phase velocities. As a further verification and application, a contra-directional coupler is designed and tested that can route the microwave signal to opposite terminals at different operating frequencies, indicating new application opportunities of plasmonic metamaterial in integrated functional devices and circuits for microwave and terahertz radiation.