Coded digital inspired tunable metamaterial absorber based on liquid crystals

This paper proposes a fully electrically controlled metamaterial absorber based on liquid crystal (LC) in the terahertz band. The proposed structure consists of a metal resonant and grating layers, with LC injected into the formed cavity. By encoding the grating and applying different voltages, LC molecules are selectively oriented in specific regions within the structure, enabling rapid switching between various specific absorption states. Experimental results indicate that rapid responses for five states can be achieved within the frequency range from 116.5 GHz to 121.8 GHz. Compared to traditional LC absorbers, this structure allows reflection modulation through different bias voltages and enables fast modulation of specific states through grating encoding.