A MEMS Reconfigurable Air-Spaced Metamaterial Enabled Dynamic Terahertz Beam Steering

This paper reports a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) reconfigurable metamaterial based dynamic terahertz beam deflector enabled by changing the ultra-subwavelength air gap between the metallic resonator array and Au ground plane. In comparison to terahertz tunable metamaterials based on modifying the constituent material properties, our MEMS-based devices can improve THz beam steering efficiency and the modulation depth of deflection coefficient. The device was fabricated by a combination of the surface and bulk silicon micromachining processes. The MEMS reconfigurable air-spaced metamaterial (ASM) demonstrated may potentiate various applications, such as the next-generation wireless communication and space technology.