A reconfigurable ladder-shaped THz metamaterial integrated with a microelectromechanical cantilever array

We experimentally demonstrate a microelectromechanically reconfigurable ladder-shaped metamaterial (LS-MM) operating in terahertz (THz) range. Ultrasmall cantilever actuators with beam length of 14 μm are employed to independently reshape each unit cell the LS-MM, correspondingly switching transmission response THz waves. The driven LS-MM achieves tuning contrast 60.1% transmittance at 0.78 and 0.9-rad delay phase shift 1.35 through off-to-on reconfiguration. In particular, actuator has high mechanical resonant frequency 585 kHz owing its small size. advantageously offers pathway for applications requiring fast tunable modulations, such as high-resolution imaging wireless communications.