Proceedings Article | 4 March 2015
Proc. SPIE. 9302, International Conference on Experimental Mechanics 2014
KEYWORDS: Microelectromechanical systems, Metamaterials, Polarization, Sensors, Silicon, Scanning electron microscopy, Terahertz radiation, Split ring resonators, Electromagnetism, Scanning tunneling microscopy
The tunable terahertz metamaterial (TTM) has attracted intense research interest, since the electromagnetic response of the metamaterial can be actively controlled through external stimulus, which is of great significance in real time applications. The active control of metamaterial characteristics is crucial in order to provide a flexible and versatile platform for mimicking fundamental physical effects. To realize the electromagnetic tunability, various approaches have been demonstrated to increase the flexibility in applications, such as changing the effective electromagnetic properties. Alternatively, MEMS-based techniques are well developed. The structural reconfiguration is a straightforward way to control the electromagnetic properties. The metamaterial properties can be directly modified by reconfiguring the unit cell which is the fundamental building block of metamaterials. Currently, our research works are focusing on MEMS-based TTM adopting stress-induced curved actuators (SICA) to adjust the resonant frequency of devices. Herein, the proposed TTM designs are double split-ring resonator (DSRR), electric split-ring resonator (eSRR), Omega-ring metamaterial (ORM), symmetric and asymmetric T-shape metamaterial (STM and ATM), respectively. We demonstrated these TTM can be active, continuous, and recoverable control the resonant frequency by using electrostatic or electrothermal actuation mechanism. Therefore, the TTM devices can be effectively used for sensors, optical switches, and filters applications.
