Liquid crystal terahertz photonics with indium tin oxide nanowhiskers and graphene as functional electrodes

Abstract

We have constructed and characterized THz phase shifters based on liquid crystals (LCs) with graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and indium-tin-oxide nanowhiskers (ITO NWhs) as transparent conducting electrodes. A graphene-based phase shifter can achieve a phase shift of pi/2 at 1.0 THz with the operating voltage of similar to 2.2 V (rms) as opposed to similar to 5.6 V (rms) for ITO-NWhs-based phase shifter in previous work. On the other hand, 2 pi phase shift at 1.0 THz was achieved in an ITO-NWhs-based phase shifter with a multi-sandwiched structure by applying similar to 2.6 V (rms). The low operation voltage of both two kinds of phase shifters imply compatibility of both type of devices with thin-film transistor (TFT) and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. The experimental results of phase shifters are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.