Efficient terahertz optical filtering with large-area all-metal and polymer-metal woven wire meshes

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that large-area woven wire meshes made of metal and polymer can serve as robust, efficient, and tunable terahertz optical filters and polarizers, suitable for large-diameter THz applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces the use of industrial-grade woven wire meshes as large-area, mechanically robust THz filters and polarizers, supported by experimental and simulation results.

Findings

Woven wire meshes act as efficient, tunable THz bandpass filters due to plasmonic resonance.

Metal-polymer meshes serve as effective THz linear polarizers with high extinction ratios.

Meshes are large, free-standing, and suitable for applications requiring large THz beam diameters.

Abstract

Many components for terahertz (THz) optical filtering are mechanically fragile and are hard to produce with large aperture, making them unsuitable for applications where larger THz beam diameter is required. In this work, the THz optical properties of industrial-grade, readily available and inexpensive woven wire meshes are studied using THz time-domain spectroscopy and numerical simulations. These meshes are meter-sized, free-standing sheet materials that are principally attractive for the use as robust, large-area THz components. Our results show that such meshes can act as efficient, tunable THz bandpass filters due to sharp plasmonic resonance supported by the interwoven metallic wires. Further, the meshes that combine metallic and polymer wires act as efficient THz linear polarizers with a polarization extinction ratio (field) above 60:1 for frequencies below 3 THz.