Additive manufacturing of highly reconfigurable plasmonic circuits for terahertz communications

THz waveguide-based integrated solutions can be of great utility at both the transmitter and receiver ends, thus simplifying the miniaturization and mass production of THz communications systems. Here we present a type of modular THz integrated circuits based on the two-wire plasmonic waveguide components fabricated using a combination of stereolithography 3D printing, wet chemistry metal deposition, and hot stamping techniques. Particular attention is paid to the design of the optical circuits based on the two-wire waveguides suspended inside a protective micro-sized enclosure featuring low transmission and bending losses, as well as low dispersion. Using such waveguides as basic building blocks, we demonstrate several key optical components, such as low-loss broadband 2×1 THz couplers, waveguide Bragg gratings, and two-channel add-drop multiplexers that operate at 140 GHz. We believe that the reported micro-encapsulated two-wire waveguide-based modular platform can have a strong impact on the field of THz signal processing and sensing due to the ease of device fabrication and handling, high degree of reconfigurability, and high potential for real-time tunability.

Ref
[1] Y. Cao, et al. Optica, 7(9), 2020.