Rapid terahertz wave manipulation in a liquid-crystal-integrated metasurface structure

A terahertz phase shifter based on liquid-crystal-integrated metasurface is proposed, which contains a three-slotted array structure and comb grating. The orientation of the liquid crystal molecules can be completely controlled by the direction of the electric field. From the acquired experimental results, it was demonstrated that the phase shift exceeds 300° in the range of 378.6 - 390.8 GHz, whereas the maximum phase shift reaches 374.1° at 383.1 GHz. The molecular reorientation transient process induced by the external electric field in the liquid crystal was measured and analyzed. Based on the molecular reorientation mechanism, which can be divided into three processes, a rapid modulation mechanism was demonstrated. From the performance of the proposed device, an actively controllable phase delay and reflectance with a cycle switching time of approximately 0.3 s was achieved, which is remarkably faster than the usual cycle time that exceeds 8 s. Our work provides useful ideas for improving the response speed of LC-based terahertz devices, which is considered of great significance for several applications, in terms of terahertz reconfigurable devices.