Broadband tunable liquid crystal terahertz waveplates driven with porous graphene electrodes

Lei Wang; Xiao-Wen Lin; Wei Hu; Guang-Hao Shao; Peng Chen; Lan-Ju Liang; Biao-Bing Jin; Pei-Heng Wu; Hao Qian; Yi-Nong Lu; Xiao Liang; Zhi-Gang Zheng; Yan-Qing Lu

doi:10.1038/lsa.2015.26

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Broadband tunable liquid crystal terahertz waveplates driven with porous graphene electrodes

Original Articles

- Broadband tunable liquid crystal terahertz waveplates driven with porous graphene electrodes
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 4, Issue 1, (2015)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures and College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  2.Research Institute of Superconductor Electronics (RISE), School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  3.State Key Laboratory of Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, China
  4.Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
- Author bio：
  
  W Hu, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China E-mail: huwei@nju.edu.cn
  YQ Lu, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China E-mail: yqlu@nju.edu.cn
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/lsa.2015.26
  CLC：
- Published：2015-03，
  
  Published Online：18 December 2014，
  
  Received：22 September 2014，
  
  Revised：10 December 2014，
  
  Accepted：12 December 2014
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Wang, L. et al. Broadband tunable liquid crystal terahertz waveplates driven with porous graphene electrodes. Light: Science & Applications, 4, e253 (2015).
DOI：

Wang, L. et al. Broadband tunable liquid crystal terahertz waveplates driven with porous graphene electrodes. Light: Science & Applications, 4, e253 (2015). DOI： 10.1038/lsa.2015.26.

摘要

Abstract

Versatile devices

especially tunable ones

for terahertz imaging

sensing and high-speed communication

are in high demand. Liquid crystal based components are perfect candidates in the optical range; however

they encounter significant challenges in the terahertz band

particularly the lack of highly transparent electrodes and the drawbacks induced by a thick cell. Here

a strategy to overcome all these challenges is proposed: Few-layer porous graphene is employed as an electrode with a transmittance of more than 98%. A subwavelength metal wire grid is utilized as an integrated high-efficiency electrode and polarizer. The homogeneous alignment of a high-birefringence liquid crystal is implemented on both frail electrodes

via

a non-contact photo-alignment technique. A tunable terahertz waveplate is thus obtained. Its polarization evolution is directly demonstrated. Furthermore

quarter-wave plates that are electrically controllable over the entire testing range are achieved by stacking two cells. The proposed solution may pave a simple and bright road toward the development of various liquid crystal terahertz apparatuses.

关键词

Keywords

liquid crystalporous grapheneterahertzwaveplate

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