Bifunctional metasurface for high-efficiency terahertz absorption and polarization conversion.

Abstract

A reconfigurable metasurface with a switchable function, broad band, high efficiency, and ultra-compact size is crucial for the development of efficient and compact devices. We propose a bifunctional metasurface that utilizes vanadium dioxide (V O 2) and graphene to achieve high-efficiency absorption and polarization conversion (PC) in the terahertz (THz) range. In our design, an extra dielectric layer is added on the top of V O 2 and graphene. It is worth pointing out that the presence of the additional dielectric layer greatly enhances the coupling of the wave in the Fabry-Perot cavity, resulting in remarkable improvement in absorption and PC efficiency. Furthermore, by controlling the working state of V O 2 and graphene, the functionality of the metasurface can be flexibly switched among absorption, cross-polarized conversion, and linear-to-circular PC (LTC). Simulation results indicate that the metasurface works in the absorption mode when V O 2 is in a metal state, and it can efficiently absorb THz waves at 2.0-7.0THz with a remarkable relative bandwidth of 111.1%. Furthermore, the absorption is over 98.4% under a normal incident case and still maintains over 90% with an incident angle of 50° at 2.8-7.0THz. Importantly, by changing the conductivity of V O 2, the absorption can be flexibly adjusted, allowing for tuning the absorption between 10% and 98.4%. When V O 2 is in an insulator state, the function of the designed metasurface is altered to PC mode, and it can efficiently convert incident linearly polarized (LP) waves into cross-polarized waves with a PC ratio exceeding 95% at 1.8-3.4THz when the Fermi level of graphene is 1eV. When switched to the LTC mode, it can convert incident LP waves into right-circularly polarized waves with ellipticity less than -0.95 at 1.7-2.1THz and into left-circularly polarized waves with ellipticity greater than 0.90 at 2.7-3.0THz when the Fermi level of graphene is 0.55eV.