Electrically tunable liquid crystal terahertz device based on double-layer plasmonic metamaterial

In this paper, a nematic liquid crystal (NLC)-based tunable terahertz (THz) plasmonic metamaterials (MMs) with large modulation depth (MD) and low insertion loss (IL) is designed and experimentally verified at THz frequencies. The proposed structure includes two-layered MM that is immersed in LC. The metal MM is used directly as electrode. The tunable device with a 46×46 array of sub-wavelength circular air loops was fabricated on a quartz glass substrate, with 2×2 cm2 area and 220 µm thickness. The obtained results show that the amplitude MD and IL for normally incident electromagnetic (EM) waves are about 96% and 1.19 dB at 421.2 GHz, respectively, when the bias voltage applied to the NLC layer varies from 0 to 16 V. Meanwhile, the transmission peak frequency gradually decreases from 421.2 to 381.8 GHz, and the frequency tunability (FT) of the proposed structure is greater than 9.35%. This study provides a potential solution for THz modulators, filters, and switches.