title: Metal-VO2 hybrid grating structure for a terahertz active switchable linear polarizer.
abstract: An active terahertz (THz) wave hybrid grating structure of Au/Ti metallic grating on VO2/Al2O3 (0001) was fabricated and evaluated. In our structure, it is shown that the metallic gratings on the VO2 layer strengthen the metallic characteristics to enhance the contrast of the metallic and dielectric phases of a VO2-based device. Especially, the metal grating-induced optical conductivity of the device is greatly enhanced, three times more than that of a metallic phase of bare VO2 films in the 0.1-2.0 THz spectral range. As an illustrative example, we fabricated an actively on/off switchable THz linear polarizer. The fabricated device has shown commercially comparable values in degree of polarization (DOP) and extinction ratio (ER). A high value of 0.89 in the modulation depth (MD) for the transmission field amplitude, superior to other THz wave modulators, is achieved. The experimental results show that the fabricated device can be highly useful in many applications, including active THz linear polarizers, THz wave modulators and variable THz attenuators.
authors.affiliation: THz Photonics Creative Research Center, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, 218 Gajeong-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-700, Korea. School of Advanced Device Technology, University of Science & Technology, 217 Gajeong-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-350, Korea.
authors.forename: Jun-Hwan
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.forename: Kiwon
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moon
authors.forename: Eui Su
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Il-Min
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Kyung Hyun
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Park