Reprogrammable Spoof Plasmonic Modulator

Driven by increasing demands for the ultra-compact interconnects of integrated electronics and the ultrafast information transfer of communication systems, research on spoof plasmonic metamaterials has attracted considerable attention. However, most efforts to date have been only achieved in individual modulation of amplitude or phase at a single frequency because of the limitation of structural design. Herein, an ultra-thin reprogrammable modulator consisting of a spoof surface plasmonic polariton (SSPP) waveguide and spoof localized surface plasmon (SLSP) resonators is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It allows controlling the amplitudes and phases of surface waves independently. By simultaneously manipulating the SSPP waveguide and SLSP resonators in real time, different modulations are realized in a programmable way, such as amplitude-shift keying, phase-shift keying, quadrature amplitude modulation, and frequency-shift keying. Measured results confirm that the reprogrammable plasmonic metamaterial can modulate the surface electromagnetic waves, holding promising applications in integrated circuits and communication systems.