Complementary Vanadium Dioxide Metamaterial with Enhanced Modulation Amplitude at Terahertz Frequencies

Abstract

One route to create tunable metamaterials is through integration with ``on-demand'' dynamic quantum materials, such as vanadium dioxide (${\mathrm{VO}}_{2}$). This enables modalities to create high-performance devices for historically challenging applications. Indeed, dynamic materials have often been integrated with metamaterials to imbue artificial structures with some degree of tunability. Conversely, metamaterials can be used to enhance and extend the natural tuning range of dynamic materials. Utilizing a complementary split-ring resonator array deposited on a ${\mathrm{VO}}_{2}$ film, we demonstrate enhanced terahertz transmission modulation upon traversing the insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) at approximately $340$ K. Our complementary metamaterial increases the modulation amplitude of the original ${\mathrm{VO}}_{2}$ film from 0.42 to 0.68 at 0.47 THz upon crossing the IMT, corresponding to an enhancement of 62%. Moreover, temperature-dependent transmission measurements reveal a significant redshift of the resonant frequency in a narrow temperature range where phase coexistence is known to occur. Neither Maxwell-Garnett nor Bruggeman effective medium theory adequately describes the observed frequency shift and amplitude decrease. However, a Drude model incorporating a significant increase of the effective permittivity does describe the experimentally observed redshift. Our results highlight that symbiotic integration of metamaterial arrays with quantum materials provides a powerful approach to engineer emergent functionality.