Metasurface Engineering in Terahertz Applications
Summary
Metasurfaces comprise planar arrays of subwavelength resonators that impose spatially varying amplitude, phase and polarisation profiles on incident radiation. In the terahertz domain—spanning roughly 0.1 to 10 THz—these engineered interfaces address long-standing challenges in beam steering, filtering, sensing and modulation by confining and manipulating electromagnetic fields at deeply subwavelength scales. Advances in material platforms, including graphene, two-dimensional semimetals and hybrid dielectric–metallic constructs, have endowed metasurfaces with active tunability via electrical gating, temperature control or structural asymmetry. Recent progress has exploited Fano interference and bound states in the continuum (BICs) to achieve ultrahigh quality-factor resonances, while Dirac semimetal inclusions have enabled dynamic reconfiguration of terahertz waveguides and filters through modulation of carrier density. Together, these innovations are laying the groundwork for compact terahertz devices with adjustable spectral response, high-speed modulation and enhanced sensitivity, opening pathways towards practical applications in wireless communications, spectroscopy and security screening.
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Metasurface Engineering in Terahertz Applications publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in metasurface engineering in terahertz applications across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Metasurface: A two-dimensional arrangement of engineered scatterers that moulds electromagnetic wavefronts at subwavelength scales.
Terahertz: The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwave and infrared frequencies, typically 0.1–10 THz.
Dirac semimetal: A material hosting massless Dirac fermions with linear energy dispersion, enabling electrically tunable plasmonic response.
Bound state in the continuum (BIC): A localized resonance mode with theoretically infinite lifetime embedded in a continuum of radiation states, yielding high Q-factors.
Fano resonance: An asymmetric spectral feature arising from interference between a discrete resonant mode and a broad continuum, sharpening spectral selectivity.
Q-factor: Quality factor denoting the ratio of stored energy to energy dissipated per oscillation cycle, indicative of resonance sharpness.
References
- 3D Dirac semimetals supported tunable terahertz BIC metamaterials. Nanophotonics (2022).
- Tunable terahertz hybrid metamaterials supported by 3D Dirac semimetals. Optical Materials Express (2023).
- 3D Dirac semimetal supported thermal tunable terahertz hybrid plasmonic waveguides.. Optics Express (2023).
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