Ultra-compact active induced-magnetism Huygens’ metasurfaces: design and application

Abstract

Recently, a new type of metasurface, the induced-magnetism Huygens’ metasurface, has attracted considerable attention due to its capability to manipulate electromagnetic waves. However, these studies mainly work in a passive way such that the functionalities are fixed once fabricated, limiting the device’s adaptability for practical applications and future commercialization. To comply with potential applications, further research endeavors need to be exerted to advance the reconfigurability and practicality. Herein, an ultra-compact and dynamically tunable design strategy of an induced-magnetism Huygens’ metasurface is proposed, whose basic unit is a pair of electric dipoles separated by a dielectric spacer and integrated with a varactor in each electric dipole. By simply changing the driven voltage of each unit, the transmission phase can be individually tuned in the near 2π range; meanwhile, the transmission amplitude remains very high. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, an active magnetism induced Huygens’ meta-lens is proposed to exhibit excellent dynamic wavefront manipulation performance. The proposed method may open an avenue toward planar lightweight low-cost dynamic wavefront manipulation devices.