An actively tunable broadband terahertz absorber is numerically demonstrated, which consists of four identical vanadium dioxide (VO₂) square loops and a metal ground plane separated by a dielectric spacer. Simulation results show that an excellent absorption bandwidth of 90% terahertz absorptance reaches as wide as 2.45 THz from 1.85 to 4.3 THz under normal incidence. By changing the conductivity of VO₂, an approximately perfect amplitude modulation is realized with the absorptance dynamically tuned from 4% to 100%. This absorption performance is greatly improved compared with previously reported VO₂-based absorbers. The physical mechanisms of a single absorption band and the perfect absorption are elucidated by the wave-interference theory and the impedance matching theory, respectively. Field distributions are further discussed to explore the physical origin of this absorber. In addition, it also has the advantages of polarization insensitivity and wide-angle absorption. The proposed absorber may have many promising applications in the terahertz range such as modulator, sensor, cloaking and optic-electro switches.

In this paper, we present an active controllable terahertz absorber with dual broadband characteristics, comprised by two diagonal identical patterns of vanadium dioxide in the top layer of the classical three-layer structure of metamaterial perfect absorbers. Simulation results show that two bandwidths of 80% absorption are 0.88 THz and 0.77 THz from 0.56 to 1.44 THz and 2.88 to 3.65 THz, respectively. By using thermal control to change the conductivity of the vanadium dioxide, absorptance can be continuously adjusted from 20% to 90%. The impedance matching theory is introduced to analyze and elucidate the physical mechanism of the perfect absorption. Field analyses are further investigated to get more insight into the physical origin of the dual broadband absorption. In addition, incident polarization insensitivity and wide-angle absorption are also demonstrated. The proposed absorber promises diverse applications in terahertz regime, such as imaging, modulating, sensing and cloaking.

Optical active Pancharatnam–Berry coding metasurfaces for amplitude modulation of terahertz beams.

Polarization manipulation of electromagnetic wave or polarization multiplexed beam shaping based on metasurfaces has been reported in various frequency bands. However, it is difficult to shape the beam with multi-channel polarization conversion in a single metasurface. Here, we propose a new method for terahertz wavefront shaping with multi-channel polarization conversion via all-silicon metasurface, which is based on the linear shape birefringence effect in spatially interleaved anisotropic meta-atoms. By superimposing the eigen- and non-eigen-polarization responses of the two kinds of meta-atoms, we demonstrate the possibility for high-efficiency evolution of several typical polarization states with two independent channels for linearly polarized waves. The measured polarization conversion efficiency is higher than 70% in the range of 0.9–1.3 THz, with a peak value of 89.2% at 1.1 THz. In addition, when more other polarization states are incident, combined with the integration of sub-arrays, we can get more channels for both polarization conversion and beam shaping. Simulated and experimental results verify the feasibility of this method. The proposed method provides a new idea for the design of terahertz multi-functional metadevices.