Terahertz wave imaging offers promising properties for non-destructive testing applications in the areas of homeland security, medicine, and industrial inspection. However, conventional optical lenses are heavy and bulky and difficult to integrate. An all-dielectric metasurface provides an attractive way to realize a planar lens of light weight that is ultrathin and offers ease of integration. Terahertz lenses based on various metasurfaces have been studied, especially for the application of wave focusing, while there are few experimental demonstrations of terahertz wave imaging lenses based on an all-dielectric metasurface. In the present work, we propose a metalens based on an all-dielectric metasurface with a sub-wavelength unit size of 0.39λ for terahertz wave imaging and experimentally demonstrate its performance in focusing and imaging. A large numerical aperture metalens was fabricated with a focal length of 300λ, radius of 300λ, and numerical aperture of 0.707. The experimental results show that the lens can focus THz waves with an incident angle up to 48°. More importantly, clear terahertz wave images of different objects were obtained for both different cases of forward- and inverse-incident directions, which demonstrate the reversibility of the metalens for imaging. Such a metalens provides a way for realization of all-planar-lens THz imaging system, and might find application in terahertz wave imaging, information processing, microscopy, and others.

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In recent years, graphene nanomesh (GNM), a material with high flexibility and tunable electronic properties, has attracted considerable attention from researchers due to its wide applications in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Herein, we have processed large-area, uniform arrays of rectangular graphene nanomesh (r-GNM) and circular graphene nanomesh (c-GNM) with different neck widths by electron beam lithography (EBL). The electronic properties of those high-quality GNM samples have been characterized systematically. Electrical measurements illustrated that top-gated field effect transistors with different neck widths of the GNM possessed different Ion/Ioff ratios. In particular, the devices based on r-GNM with a neck width of 30 nm were found to possess the largest Ion/Ioff ratio of ~ 100, and the band gap of the r-GNM was estimated to be 0.23 eV, which, to the best of authors’ knowledge, is the highest value for graphene ribbons or a GNM with a neck width under 30 nm. Furthermore, the terahertz response of large-area r-GNM devices based on the photoconductive effect was estimated to be 10 mA/W at room temperature. We also explored the practical application of terahertz imaging, showing that the devices can be used in a feasible setting with a response time < 20 ms; this enables accurate and fast imaging of macroscopic samples.

Herein, the effects of width and boundary defects on the energy gap of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have been explored and theoretically investigated by means of semi-empirical atomic basis Extended Hückel method. Due to the existence of boundary defects, the energy gap of GNRs is mainly determined by the width of graphene nanoribbons for armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) or zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs). Interestingly, the energy gap of AGNRs with a 120° V-type defect displays the monotone decreasing tendency when the width reaches to 2 nm, while the energy gap of intrinsic AGNRs is oscillatory. At the same time, the energy gap of U-type defected ZGNRs is opened, which differs from the zero energy gap characteristics of the intrinsic zigzag graphene. Furthermore, the size of energy gap of the defected AGNRs and ZGNRs with the same width is proved to be very close. Calculation results demonstrate that the energy gap of GNRs is just inversely proportional to the width and has little to do with the crystallographic direction. All the findings above provide a basis for energy gap engineering with different edge defects in GNRs and signify promising prospects in graphene-based semiconductor electronic devices.

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