A low-voltage high-speed terahertz spatial light modulator using active metamaterial

Abstract

An all solid-state metamaterial based terahertz (THz) spatial light modulator (SLM) is presented which uses high mobility 2DEG to manipulate the metamaterial resonant frequency (0.45 THz) leading to terahertz wave modulation. The 2DEG is created by embedding pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistors in the capacitive gap of each electrical-LC resonator, allowing the charge density to be controlled with very low voltage (1 V) and modulating speeds up to 10 MHz while consuming sub-milliwatt power. We have demonstrated our SLM as a 2 × 2 pixel array operating around 0.45 THz by raster scanning a 6 × 6 image of an occluded metal object behind a thick polystyrene screen using a single-pixel THz imaging setup.