Princeton metasurface could unlock terahertz comms

The terahertz band is located between microwaves and infrared in the electromagnetic spectrum and has the capacity to can transmit much more data than existing radio-based wireless systems. Unlike radio waves, however, the terahertz band relies on line-of-sight and does not work well when physical obstacles are blocking its path. The new metasurface device could help overcome this limitation by bouncing incoming terahertz waves in any desirable direction.

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"A terahertz beam would be like a laser pointer, whereas today's radio wave transmitters are like light bulbs that send light everywhere,” said Kaushik Sengupta, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Princeton and a lead author of the new study, which is published in Nature Electronics.  “A programmable metasurface is one that produces any possible fields; it's the ultimate projector."