Tunable Toroidal Response in a Reconfigurable Terahertz Metamaterial

Abstract Compared with the traditional electric and magnetic multipoles, the existence of a dynamic toroidal moment has received increasing interest in recent years. This is due to its novel electromagnetic response, including dynamic non‐radiating charge‐current configurations and non‐reciprocal interactions. Reconfigurable terahertz metamaterials where artificial toroidal metamolecules and traditional microelectromechanical systems bi‐material cantilever structures are integrated within the same unit cell are presented. Through modification of the bending angle by thermal actuation, the toroidal dipole intensity increases by five orders of magnitude in the out‐of‐plane direction with an overall increase in the toroidal intensity of nearly an order of magnitude. Terahertz time‐domain spectroscopy is used to determine the evolution of the transmission as a function of the bending angle. This enables numerical confirmation of the toroidal response using multipole decomposition with additional confirmation provided by phase analysis. The results demonstrate the use of bi‐material cantilevers to realize a tunable toroidal moment with potential applications in sensing and next‐generation communication technologies.