Reconfigurable transmissive metasurface with a combination of scissor and rotation actuators for independently controlling beam scanning and polarization conversion

Chhunheng Lor; Ratanak Phon; Sungjoon Lim

doi:10.1038/s41378-024-00671-y

Reconfigurable transmissive metasurface with a combination of scissor and rotation actuators for independently controlling beam scanning and polarization conversion

Microsyst Nanoeng. 2024 Mar 21:10:40. doi: 10.1038/s41378-024-00671-y. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Chhunheng Lor¹, Ratanak Phon², Sungjoon Lim^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Intelligent Semiconductor Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Heukseok-Dong, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul, 06974 Republic of Korea.
² School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Heukseok-Dong, Dongjak-Gu, Seoul, 06974 Republic of Korea.

Abstract

Polarization conversion and beam scanning metasurfaces are commonly used to reduce polarization mismatch and direct electromagnetic waves in a specific direction to improve the strength of a wireless signal. However, identifying suitable active and mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces for polarization conversion and beam scanning is a considerable challenge, and the reported metasurfaces have narrow scanning ranges, are expensive, and cannot be independently controlled. In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable transmissive metasurface combined with a scissor and rotation actuator for independently controlling beam scanning and polarization conversion functions. The metasurface is constructed with rotatable unit cells (UCs) that can switch the polarization state between right-handed (RHCP) and left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) by flipping the UCs to reverse their phase variation. Moreover, independent beam scanning is achieved using the scissor actuator to linearly change the distance between the UCs. Numerical and experimental results confirm that the proposed metasurface can perform beam scanning in the range of 28° for both the positive and negative regions of a radiation pattern (RHCP and LHCP beams) at an operational frequency of 10.5 GHz.

Keywords: Electrical and electronic engineering; Nanocavities.