Tunable Metamaterials Fabricated by Fiber Drawing

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable fiber drawing method to create tunable THz metamaterials with reversible plasma frequency shifts, enabling dynamic control of their electromagnetic properties.

Contribution

It introduces a practical fiber drawing approach for fabricating tunable metamaterials with reversible and significant plasma frequency tuning at THz wavelengths.

Findings

50% plasma frequency shift under compression

Reversible tuning demonstrated

Scalable fabrication process established

Abstract

We demonstrate a practical scalable approach to the fabrication of tunable metamaterials. Designed for THz wavelengths, the metamaterial is comprised of polyurethane filled with an array of indium wires using the well-established fiber drawing technique. Modification of the dimensions of the metamaterial provides tunability: by compressing the metamaterial we demonstrated a 50% plasma frequency shift using THz time domain spectroscopy. Releasing the compression allowed the metamaterial to return to its original dimensions and plasma frequency, demonstrating dynamic reversible tunability.