Tailoring terahertz surface plasmon wave through free-standing multi-walled carbon nanotubes metasurface

Surface plasmons have a fundamental role in the dynamics of photon-electron interactions and in optical metamaterials. Terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy was used to characterize the complex dielectric constant, index of refraction, and conductivity of super-aligned, free-standing, multi-walled carbon nanotube films over the range 0.2-2.5 THz. These complex parameters were in excellent agreement with Maxwell-Garnett and Drude-Lorentz models. In addition, surface plasmon excitations in engineered, subwavelength, multi-walled carbon nanotube metasurfaces were examined. The observed surface plasmon resonances, reproduced by simulation, could be changed over the THz frequency range by altering the lattice constant of the arrays. The THz transmission was enhanced at the resonance peak. Overall, the results indicate potential applications for THz metasurfaces based on super-aligned, free-standing multi-walled carbon nanotubes.