Switchable terahertz metamaterials: Using the insulator-metal transition of vanadium dioxide to activate metamaterial properties

Terahertz (THz) metamaterials have recently attracted much interest due to their ability to tune propagation properties using sub-wavelength structures. In this paper we demonstrate the first metamaterial device developed by patterning a vanadium dioxide (VO₂) wire-grid structure onto a c-sapphire substrate. Temperature and polarization dependent THz time-domain spectroscopy transmission measurements are taken to evaluate the device performance as a function of the metamaterial parameters. The transmission variance with polarization is enhanced by increasing the filling factor of the wire-grid structure.