Ultrawideband solid-state terahertz phase shifter electrically modulated by tunable conductive interface in total internal reflection geometry

Phase modulation plays a crucial role in various terahertz applications, including biomedical imaging, high-rate communication, and radar detection. Existing terahertz phase shifters typically rely on tuning the resonant effect of metamaterial structures to achieve a narrow bandwidth phase shift. However, the terahertz band offers a wide bandwidth resource, which has great advantages in high longitudinal resolution detection, high-capacity communication, spectral imaging and so on. Here, we propose and demonstrate an ultrawideband terahertz phase shifting mechanism that utilizes an optical conductivity tuneable interface combined with a non-resonant metasurface operating in the total internal reflection geometry. This approach effectively modulates the phase of the reflected terahertz signal in an ultrawideband. To implement this mechanism, we designed a structure consisting of graphene-loaded non-resonant periodic metal microslits arranged in the total internal reflection geometry. By controlling the gate voltage of the graphene within a range of 5 V, an averaged ~120° continuous phase shift in the frequency range of 0.4 to 1.2 THz was achieved. Notably, in the frequency range of 1 to 1.2 THz, the phase modulation exhibited a linear relationship with the driving voltage. Our device demonstrated minimal fluctuations in the reflected amplitude, with a deviation of less than 1 dB and an insertion loss of less than 10 dB. Additionally, the modulation speed of this solid-state device reached the kHz level. Remarkably, the phase modulation bandwidth (Δf/f) achieved approximately 100% of the arithmetic centre frequency at 0.8 THz, surpassing the definition of ultrawideband, which typically encompasses 20% of the centre frequency. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and most wideband phase shifter developed for the terahertz regime to date.