Flexible and tunable metamaterials at terahertz frequencies

In this paper, we present novel optically tunable metamaterials (MMs) on flexible polymer sheet operating at terahertz (THz) frequencies. The flexible MMs, consisting of electric split-ring resonators (ESRRs) on GaAs patches, were fabricated on a polyimide thin layer using the developed transfer technique. Our experimental results revealed that with increasing fluence of the incident excitation beam, the transmission amplitude increases from 24% to 40% at 0.98 THz yet decreases from 78% to 25% at 1.25 THz. Our flexible tunable device enables potential applications for terahertz sensing, modulation and perfect absorption not only on rigid flat surfaces but also on curved surfaces.