Microelectromechanical System-Based Reconfigurable Terahertz Metamaterial for Polarization Filter, Switch, and Logic Modulator Applications

The terahertz (THz) metamaterials integrated with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have led to the realization of dynamic control in amplitude, phase, polarization, and spin angular momentum of the THz wave. In this study, we demonstrate an MEMS-based reconfigurable THz metamaterial (RTM) composed of a split ring resonator (SRR) for real-time modulation of THz wave. By gradually increasing the polarization angle of the incident THz wave, the resonant frequency of SRR switches from 0.74 to 1.16 THz, and the maximum modulation depth is more than 70%. When the MEMS-based RTM is actuated by different DC bias voltages, the polarization-dependent transmission intensity and resonant frequency of the device can be actively tuned. MEMS-based RTM shows logical function characteristics that can be used for logic modulators by performing the driving voltages and polarization states as 2-bit input signals and quantizing the transmission response as “on” and “off” states. The logic gates of “NAND” are at 0.439 THz and “AND” is at 0.732 THz. These results offer potential applications for the proposed MEMS-based RTM in tunable and reconfigurable polarization filters, optical switches, programmable logic modulators, and so on.