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International Journal of Electronics

ISSN: 0020-7217 (Print) 1362-3060 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tetn20

A 340-GHz thin film polarisation converter

Meng Zhang, Xuetian Wang, Xueqi Yuan, Hongmin Gao & Shiqi Ma

To cite this article: Meng Zhang, Xuetian Wang, Xueqi Yuan, Hongmin Gao & Shiqi Ma (2019) A
340-GHz thin film polarisation converter, International Journal of Electronics, 106:4, 634-647, DOI:
10.1080/00207217.2018.1545927

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207217.2018.1545927

Accepted author version posted online: 07


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Published online: 26 Nov 2018.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS
2019, VOL. 106, NO. 4, 634–647
https://doi.org/10.1080/00207217.2018.1545927

A 340-GHz thin film polarisation converter


Meng Zhang, Xuetian Wang, Xueqi Yuan, Hongmin Gao and Shiqi Ma
Department of Microwave Technology Research Center, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY


This paper introduces a 340-GHz polarisation converter. The polarisation Received 29 July 2017
converter consists of a bilayer metamaterial, which is processed by the Accepted 20 October 2018
flexible thin film lithography method. Two-dimensional metamaterial KEYWORDS
offer such advantages over traditional quarter-wave-plates as compact- THz device; polarisation
ness, low profile and simple fabrication process, but the insertion loss is converter; flexible film
comparably high. In order to lower the insertion loss, the 10-μm ultrathin device; metamaterial;
polyimide substrate and a bilayer structure separated by a quarter wave- transmission line theory
length air impedance match layer are adopted. After the horn antenna’s
far-field test by vector network analyser and the Gaussian beam test
based on Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), the results
show that in the band of 325–350 GHz, the transmission loss is less
than 2 dB, and the axial ratio is less than 3 dB; besides, simulation and
test insertion loss performance difference is less than 1 dB, which indi-
cates that the method we adopt is effective. In addition, based on
transmission line theory, we analyse its working principle and the influ-
ence from the fabrication error.

1. Introduction
The terahertz (THz) part of the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from 0.3 to 10 THz, has found
numerous potential applications; therefore, the THz science and technology has drawn massive
attention over the past decade (Tonouchi, 2007), such as SAR Imagine (Ahmadi & Akbarizadeh, 2018;
Akbarizadeh, 2013; Akbarizadeh & Moghaddam, 2016; Akbarizadeh & Rahmani, 2016; Andekah,
Naderan, & Akbarizadeh, 2017; Modava & Akbarizadeh, 2017; Ramezani, Zakidizaji, Masoudi, &
Akbarizadeh, 2016), material detection (Sibik & Zeitler, 2016), security imaging (Kemp et al., 2013;
Taiebi Akbarizadeh, & Farshidi, 2017) and medical diagnosis (Taylor et al., 2011), millimetre wave and
low-frequency THz wave communication systems are also gradually coming out of laboratory and
marching towards practical use (Kleine-Ostmann & Nagatsuma, 2011). However, as the working
frequency increases, the requirements for higher manufacture precision, low dielectric loss materials
and mature design theory for high-performance THz devices are still not satisfied, which limit the
application of millimetre and THz wave technology. Recently, metamaterial is considered as a solution
to improve the performance of THz devices (Hunter, Rhodes, Sandhu, Snyder, & Meng, 2016) and to
control transmission property of microwave and THz waves; the methods to modulate polarization
state and phase characteristic of THz waves has drawn massive attentions (Doumanis, Goussetis,
Gómez-Tornero, & Cahill, 2011; Kuznetsov, Astafyev, & Arzhannikov, 2013; Li, Wang, Cao, Liu, & Zhu,
2010; Mo, Wei, Wang, Wang, Li & Liu 2016). Phase modulation devices such as half-wave plate and
quarter-wave plate have been applied in many situations (Chen & Zhang, 2013; Hollung, Shiroma,
Markovic, & Popovic, 1996; Martin & Wylde, 2009; Molter et al., 2012). Polarisation converter is similar to

CONTACT Meng Zhang zmziqiangbuxi@163.com Department of Microwave Technology Research Center, Beijing
Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 635

the quarter-wave plate, it can convert linearly polarised incident wave into a circularly polarised wave
and vice versa. At present, there exist many polarization converters studied and fabricated, the working
frequency of which range from low-frequency microwave up to far-infrared (Min, Hirokawa, Sakurai,
Ando, & Goto, 1996; Navarro-Cia, Rodriguez-Ulibarri, Torres, & Beruete, 2012). There are two main types
of polarisation converters: the reflection type (Sun, He, Hao, & Zhou, 2011; Wu, 2002) and the
transmission type (Huang, Yang & Yang, 2014). The former has smaller transmission loss and is easier
to be fabricated, but its working bandwidth is generally narrow. In a practical system, compared to the
latter, higher precision of placement angle is needed. The latter one has high insertion loss in the THz
band. Bayat et al. (2010) introduced a photonic-crystal metamaterial integrated with the circuit, which
has the ability to convert the co-polarisation to cross-polarisation within the band of 199–208 GHz, and
the insertion loss is about 5 dB. Nouman, Hwang and Jang (2016) propose a dual-band single-layer
metamaterial which operates within 0.64–0.82 and 0.96–1.3 THz with an insertion loss ranging from
3.9 to 10 dB. Grady et al. (2013) describe an ultra-wideband polarisation rotator ranging from 0.5 to
1.7 THz, but the lowest insertion loss of which is higher than 2 dB and its tri-layer structure increase its
fabrication complexity. In this article, we design and manufacture a transmission-type polarisation
converter working in the band of 325–350 GHz, the insertion loss is less than 2 dB. Besides, the
proposed polarisation converter is of relatively high fabrication tolerance and therefore it decreases
the difficulty of processing and assembling. What is more, the design and manufacture methods in this
paper have been applied to higher frequencies such as 450 and 670 GHz.

2. Design and analysis


When linearly polarisation wave radiates at the polarisation converter with a certain angle, the
electric field can be decomposed into two orthogonal polarisation components, then the circularly
polarised wave can be realised by adjusting the phase and amplitude of two orthogonal compo-
nents. Similarly, the circularly polarised waves can be reconverted into linearly polarised waves. The
unit of the designed polarisation converter is shown in Figure 1(a). The lattice constant is far
smaller than operating wavelength, and device dimension can be considered infinite, so the
Floquet port theory in Ansoft HFSS is applied for the simulation. The dielectric substrate is set to
be the 10-μm-thick polyimide, whose εr ≈ 3, and the dielectric loss tangent is about 0.1 (Cong et al.,
2013).

Figure 1. (a) Unit structure of the polarisation converter. (b) Overall structure of the polarisation converter, metallic pattern with
the structure parameters a = 142 µm, b = 272 µm, c = 60.5 µm, d = 109 µm, and the double layer space is about 680 m. (3λ/4 of
the working frequency).
636 M. ZHANG ET AL.

Figure 2. Equivalent circuit model for E_∥ component in unit, L1 is the equivalent inductance produced by square metal patch,
L2 is the equivalent inductance produced by metal grid, C1 is the equivalent capacitance produced by adjacent square metal
patch.

Figure 3. Equivalent circuit model for E_⊥ component in unit, L1 is the equivalent inductance produced by metal grid, L2 is the
equivalent inductance produced by square metal patch, C2 is the equivalent capacitance produced by two adjacent metal
grids, C1 is the equivalent capacitance produced by adjacent square metal patch and metal grid.

The polarisation direction of the incident wave is set to be 45° to the long metal grid, so the
electric field can be decomposed into two components, as shown in Figure 1 (b), Ejj and E?
represent the electric components that are parallel and vertical to the long metal grid, respectively.
Correspondingly, the equivalent coupling circuits of the unit cell are shown in Figures 2 and Figure 3.
The equivalent capacitance and inductance of the circuits can be changed by adjusting the size of
the surface metamaterial pattern, which can induce 90° phase modulation by the anisotropic
modulation effect under orthogonally polarised incident waves and realise linear-circular conversion.

3. Influence of structural parameters


The polarisation converter consists of a bilayer metamaterial, as shown in Figure 10(b), and the 10-
μm ultrathin polyimide film is adopted as the substrate of monolayer metamaterial. To create
a quarter wavelength air impedance match layer, the two layers of flexible thin film are attached to
the two sides of a metal ring, whose thickness is about 3/4λ and the inner diameter is 30 mm. Due
to the gravity effect, the film deformation adds difficulty to assure the thickness of quarter
wavelength air impedance match layer. In the following section, some new concepts will be
introduced to explain how the thickness variation of the match layer and the alignment accuracy
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 637

influence the performance of the polarisation converter, especially focusing on the transmission
loss and phase modulation performance of two orthogonal polarisation components. Besides, for
oblique incidence wave, we will propose a new theory about the average phase modulation factor
to quantify the phase modulation characteristic for multi-layer structure polariszation converter.

3.1 Influence of layer spacing on phase modulation


Firstly, two typical polarisation converters with different layer spacing (λ/4 and λ/2) are taken as
examples. As for the instantaneous electric field, the propagation direction is parallel to x-axis, and
the polarisation direction is parallel to y-axis, in free space it can be expressed as
!  
E1 ¼ ^yEym cos wt  kx  φy (1)

Eym is the amplitude of the electric field, φy represents the initial phase and k is the phase constant
that is 2π/λ in free space. To simplify the analysis, the initial phase of the electromagnetic waves is
assumed to be π/2. The electric field along the propagation direction at that time is depicted in
Figure 4. If the layer spacing of the polarisation converter is λ/4, the amplitude of the electric field
at the first layer of the converter can be expressed as E1 ¼ Eym sinðwt  kxÞ (the polarisation
direction is always parallel to the Y direction).
Since the layer spacing of the polarisation converter is λ/4, the amplitude of the electric field at
the second layer can be expressed as
E2 ¼ Eym sinðwt  kx þ k  λ=4Þ (2)

which is Eym cosðwt  kxÞ. At time t, E1 and E2 reach the front surface of the first and the second
layers, respectively. Considering that the thickness of each layer is very small, we can assume
that the time to pass it through is Δt ðΔt ! 0Þ, which brings about a phase shift ejφ . As a result, at
time t þ Δt, E1 and E2 is expressed as

E1 ¼ Eym sinðwt  kxÞe jφ (3)

E2 ¼ Eym cosðwt  kxÞe jφ t  t þ Δt (4)

Here a hypothesis is proposed: during a time of Δt, the overall phase modulation of the polarisa-
tion converter is the synthesis of monolayer modulation, which means the phase modulation effect
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
of two layers at time t can be synthesised as E ¼ E12 þ E22 . And E can be simplified to Eym , which is

Figure 4. Schematic diagram of the electromagnetic waves when the spacing of two layers is λ4.
638 M. ZHANG ET AL.

Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the electromagnetic waves when the spacing of two layers is λ/2.

a time-independent variant when the spacing of two layers is λ/4, then after Δt, E ¼ Eym e jφ .
Similarly, if the layer spacing is λ/2, as shown in Figure 5, the electric field can be expressed as

E1 ¼ Eym sinðwt  kxÞ (5)

E2 ¼ Eym sinðwt  kx þ k  λ=2Þ ¼ Eym sinðwt  kxÞ (6)

Then, the equivalent phase modulation of two layers can be a synthesisd as



pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 
ffi pffiffiffi  pffiffiffi
E ¼ E12 þ E22 ¼ 2Eym sinðwt  kxÞ, and after Δt it becomes E ¼ 2Eym sinðwt  kxÞe jφ .
Based on the analysis above, a conclusion can be drawn that at the same initial condition, the
phase modulation effects of polarisation converter with different layer spacing differ a lot.
Furthermore, polarisation converter with any layer spacing can modulate the phase of the electro-
magnetic wave, but there exists an optimal distance to maximise the phase modulation effect. If
the layer spacing is an arbitrary value λe (if λe is much smaller than the working wavelength, the
coupling effect between layers will be strong, to simplify the analysis, it is not taken into
consideration), then the two-modulated electric fields can be written as
E1a ¼ Eym sinðwt  kxÞ (7)

E2a ¼ Eym sinðwt  kx þ k  λe Þ (8)

According to the periodicity of the electromagnetic wave, here kλe ¼ θ þ 2π  n


ðθ 2 ð0  2πÞ; n ¼ 0; 1; 2 . . .Þ. Similarly, the equivalent modulated electric field of the polarisation
converter can be expressed as
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Ea ¼ Eym ½sinðwt  kxÞ2 þ ½sinðθ þ wt  kxÞ2 (9)

The average phase modulation factor ψ of the polarisation converter is analysed in one time period
T and expressed as Equation (10), where T ¼ 2π=ω and ω is angular frequency.
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
T
ò 0 ½sinðwt  kxÞ2 þ ½sinðθ þ wt  kxÞ2 dt
ψ¼ (10)
T
It helps to express the quantitative relationship of the layer spacing and the phase modulation
depth more accurately. However, since the polarisation converter is a bilayer metamaterial, the
electromagnetic wave should pass through the monolayer metamaterial of same structure twice;
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 639

therefore, a modification should be given to, which is ψ ¼ ψ  ψ. Similarly, when the polarisation
Q
converter is n-layer structure, ψn ¼ n ψ. There are some assumptions made in the derivation of
the theory above. Firstly, the polarisation converter has been well designed, so the impedance of
polarisation converter matches well with the impedance of air. Secondly, the reflection wave
between layers is very weak, and so there is no noise caused by the complex multi-reflection on
the surface of the polarisation converter. Thirdly, the layer spacing is larger than λ/4; then, the
coupling effect between the double-layer metamaterial is very weak. From the analysis above, with
the increase of the layer number, we can deduce that the phase modulation effect becomes more
sensitive to layer spacing. Besides, by solving the integral equation above, with regard to a bilayer
structure, the average phase modulation factor ψ0 can be maximised up to 1 when
θ ¼ π=2 þ n  π, which means the layer spacing is λ=4 þ n  λ=2, and it can be minimised to
0.81 when layer spacing is n  λ=2.

3.2 Influence of layer spacing on translation loss


The equivalent transmission line model of the double-layer polarisation converter in free space can
be expressed as Figure 6. The left end is the signal source which is perfectly matched and the right
end is equivalent to an infinite transmission line whose characteristic impedance is equal to the
free space, which means that there is no reflection at the right end of the transmission line.
The parallel equivalent reactance jB of two orthogonal polarisation electric field components is
shown in Figures 3 and Figure 4. Since the right end of the transmission line is in a matching state,
the input admittance at point a is decided by the characteristic impedance of free space (η) and the
equivalent reactance component ( jB), that is YinðaÞ ¼ 1=η þ 1=jB. When the wave transmits from
point a to point b, the length of the path (layer spacing) is d, then the input admittance at point
b can be calculated by the following:
 
YinðbÞ ¼ 1=η  ðYinðaÞ þ j=η  tanβdÞ= 1=η þ jYinðaÞ  tanβd (11)

The admittance at point c is the parallel impedance of YinðbÞ and jB. This process can be depicted in
the Smith admittance chart shown in Figure 7 (Yan & Li, 2011). Point a in the chart is the input
admittance YinðaÞ , and when wave passes through the spacing between layers, the admittance
becomes YinðbÞ at the point b of the chart, and the point c represents YinðcÞ . Figure 7 shows a special
case, that is, the layer spacing of the polarisation converter is selected so well that the real part of
the input admittance at point b is 1=η and the imaginary part is  1=jB. When the wave reaches
the second layer, it can achieve a complete impedance matching at point c, which means there is
no reflection loss caused by impedance mismatch, in this case, the layer spacing for a perfect
match is about λ=4 þ n  λ=2.
Based on the analysis above, for any electric field polarisation component, the performance of
impedance matching of the polarisation converter is dependent on the layer spacing of the

Figure 6. Equivalent transfer circuit of polarisation converter in free space.


640 M. ZHANG ET AL.

Figure 7. Transmission of electromagnetic waves between polarisation converters on Smith admittance chart.

converter and the equivalent reactance jB which is decided by the size of the metal pattern. It is

difficult to achieve a 90 phase difference and to ensure that the device is perfectly matched under
two orthogonal polarisation electric field components at the same time. Besides, the analysis is also
fit for multi-layer structure; however, as mentioned above, with the increase of the working
frequency and the decrease of layer spacing, small variation of layer spacing will have a greater
influence on the matching performance for multi-layer structure. Therefore, the multi-layer struc-
ture is not suitable for high frequency. On the other hand, we cannot neglect the disadvantage of
single-layer polarisation converter that has a large reflection loss caused by impedance mismatch
to achieve a 90 phase difference (Markovich, Andryieuski, Zalkovskij, Malureanu, & Lavrinenko,
2013), the transmission loss is larger than 50%.

3.3 Influence of alignment error and oblique incidence of electromagnetic waves


The designed polarisation converter works at about 340 GHz, the working wavelength is merely
882 μm and the lattice constant is smaller than the wavelength. During the manufacture and
assembling process for the double-layer structure, some errors are inevitable. The flexible thin
film lithography method is of high precision and the manufacture error of the line width of is
within 0.5 μm, so compared to the actual line width which is about 78 μm, the manufacture
error is negligible. The errors which may affect the performance of device most are from layer
spacing, the alignment error of bilayer metamaterial and the angular error of incident waves,
which means that the propagation direction of the transmitting waves is not vertical to the
surface of the converter. This section mainly focuses on the alignment error and angular error of
incident waves. As shown in Figure 8, the rectangle represents the side view of the metal
pattern of the polarisation converter, because the thin film substrate has little impact on device
performance, it is not considered in the analysis. Figure 8 shows a polarisation converter with
a big alignment error. If a beam of plane waves pass through the centre of polarisation, it can
be decomposed into two components according to the principle of vector decomposition
shown in Figure 8. So the electromagnetic beam 3, the electromagnetic wave at the second
layer of the converter, can be seen as the vector decomposition and composition of the
irradiation electromagnetic beams 1 and 2. Therefore, the misalignment between the bilayer
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 641

Figure 8. Schematic diagram of the equivalent transmission of waves through the polarisation converter with misalignment
between double-layer metal patterns.

metamaterial will cause extra distance for incident wave to transmit. Obviously, the extra
distance is related to the layer spacing of the converter and the alignment error, which barely
influences the performance of the device.
If the incident wave is not vertical to the polarisation converter, the projection size of the metal
pattern along the polarisation direction of the electric field becomes small, as shown in Figure 9. When
the incident angle changes from zero to θ, the equivalent projection size must be corrected by

Figure 9. Schematic diagram of oblique incidence of electromagnetic waves.


642 M. ZHANG ET AL.

Figure 10. Physical map of the polarisation converter. (a) single-layer sample. (b) After process of adhesion.

multiplying cosθ, which further changes the reactance of the equivalent coupling circuit of one unit.
Meanwhile, it also increases the distance the electromagnet wave travels between double layer.

4. Processing and testing


The main improvement compared with the traditional lithography process in the design is to utilise the
liquid polyimide to deposit the polyimide film with a certain thickness (Mao et al., 2016; Tao et al., 2008)
rather than to use the solid polyimide film product, which can control the thickness of the substrate more
flexibly. Besides, choosing solid film as the substrate would lead to a series of problems, for example, the
flatness of film surface differs a lot in a large region and makes it difficult for metal patterns to attach to
film surface flatly. Besides, high conductivity metals, such as aluminium and copper, have poor adhesion
with film’s surface, which makes the metal parts easy to fall off at stripping process. Through multiple
experiments and adjustments, the product with perfect metal patterns in a 4-inch region is manufac-
tured. The prototype of a single-layer polarisation converter is shown in Figure 10(a). The polarisation
converter is a double-layer structure, and with the use of silica gel, the two layers are attached to the side
surfaces of a 680-μm- thick metal ring. In order to make the film surface smooth and guarantee the
alignment of the double-layer metal pattern as accurate as possible, a micro-fabrication machine is
designed; the vacuum absorption part of the machine can ensure the smoothness of the film’s surface.
The fabricated double-layer polarisation converter is shown in Figure 10(b).
Two common measurement methods in low-frequency THz range, that is, the far-field horn antenna
test based on Vector Network Analyser and the Gaussian beam test based on THz-TDS (Ferguson &
Zhang, 2003; Jiang & Deng, 2014), are adopted to test the performance of polarisation converter. The
transmission loss and phase difference of two orthogonal polarisation electric field components are
mainly measured. Testing process is depicted as follows: the amplitude and phase of reference signal
(air, without converter) are measured at first. Secondly, put the polarisation converter in the signal path.
Then, the amplitude and phase of Ek component are measured. After that, the polarisation converter is
rotated 90 to measure the amplitude and phase of the E? component.
The adopted 500 GHz Vector Network Analyser is produced by 41st Institute of CETC. Testing
frequency band is from 325 to 500 GHz. The antennas of the transceiver are horn antennas. In the test,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 643

Figure 11. (a) Transmission loss of simulation and horn antenna far field test results for two orthogonal polarisation electric
field components.
(b) Phase difference of simulation and horn antenna far field test results for two orthogonal polarisation electric field components.

the polarisation converter is placed in an absorber cavity whose diameter is about 28 mm to avoid the
multipath transmission effect of electromagnetic waves. Besides the distance between the polarisation
converter and the horn antenna satisfies the far-field condition of the antenna, the electromagnetic
waves passing through the polarisation converter can be seen as plane waves. The test results are
644 M. ZHANG ET AL.

Figure 12. (a) Transmission loss of simulation and Gaussian beam irradiation test results for two orthogonal polarisation
electric field components.
(b) Phase difference of simulation and Gaussian beam irradiation test results for two orthogonal polarisation electric field components.

shown in Figure 11, of which Δφ is the phase difference of two orthogonal polarisation electric field
components.
The THz-TDS used in this test belongs to Centre for Terahertz Waves of Tianjin University. The
radius of the Gaussian beam is about 3 mm. The testing process is the same as the horn antenna
far field test described above. The test results are shown in Figure 12.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS 645

Figure 13. The axial ratio characteristic of linearly polarisation waves passing through polarisation converter.

It can be seen from the results that in test based on THz-TDS, the phase difference of the two
electric field components is consistent with the simulation, but the results of Vector Network
Analyser measurement tend to be smaller. It is mainly because the Vector Network Analyser
measurement system needs to do some adjustments by hand, which may change the reference
signal. Besides, the absorbing materials are not ideal and the edge of the device cannot be
treated as infinite period structure as in simulation, so the phase difference measured is a little
different from that of simulation. The result of transmission loss tested by Vector Network
Analyser is consistent with simulation; in contrast, the transmission loss tested by THz-TDS is
larger compared to the simulation, because the laser source of testing system is unstable during
the measurement. With the test time passing, there is a serious power-loss phenomenon of the
laser source. However, test results using two methods have a high degree of agreement with the
simulation.
Using Equations (3) and (4) (Balanis, 2005), the axis ratio of the linearly polarised waves passing
through the polarisation converter can be attained. The results are shown in Figure 13.

 2
Ek  þ jE? j2 þ pffiffiffi
a
AR ¼  2
Ek  þ jE? j2  pffiffiffi
(12)
a

 4  2
a ¼ Ek  þ jE? j4 þ 2Ek  jE? j2 cosð2ΔφÞ (13)

As the results show, either in the horn antenna far field test or the Gaussian beam test, the axial
ratio of linearly polarised waves passing through polarisation converter is less than 3 dB in the
band of 325–350 GHz.
646 M. ZHANG ET AL.

5. Conclusion
In this paper, we design and process a polarisation converter working in the band of 325–350 GHz.
Firstly, we adopt ultra-thin polyimide substrate and quarter wavelength air impedance match layer
to lower the insertion loss, while maintaining the advantage of two-dimensional metamaterial, the
simulation and test results show that the transmission loss is less than 2 dB and the axial ratio is
less than 3 dB. Secondly, for multi-layer structure polarisation converter, we proposed a new theory
about the average phase modulation factor to quantify the relationship between the phase
modulation characteristic and layer spacing. Besides, we analyse the impact of layer misalignment
and incident wave angular error on the performance of the device, through which we rule out the
multi-layer and single-layer polarisation converter plan. Finally, the results show that the insertion
loss performance difference between simulation and test is less than 1 dB, which indicates that it
has a good practical value. Besides, the error analysis and the processing proves that the designed
polarisation converter has relatively high tolerance for manufacture error and the adopted flexible
film lithography technology satisfies the accuracy requirement.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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