Active Terahertz Chiral Metamaterials Based on Phase Transition of Vanadium Dioxide (VO2)

Abstract

Compared with natural materials, chiral metamaterials have been demonstrated with orders of magnitude stronger chiroptical response, which provides the basis for applications such as ultracompact polarization components and plasmonic-enhanced biosensing. Terahertz chiral metamaterials that allow dynamic polarization control of terahertz waves are of great practical interest, but remain extremely rare. Here, we show that hybrid metamaterials integrated with vanadium dioxide (VO2) exhibiting phase transition can enable dynamically tunable chiroptical responses at terahertz frequencies. In particular, a circular dichroism of ~40° and a maximum polarization rotation of ~200°/λ are observed around 0.7 THz. Furthermore, our study also reveals that the chiroptical response from the proposed metamaterials is strongly dependent on the phase transition of VO2, leading to actively controllable polarization states of the transmitted terahertz waves. This work paves the way for the development of terahertz metadevices capable of enabling active polarization manipulation.