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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2519545, IEEE
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A Reconfigurable Graphene Reflectarray for

Generation of Vortex THz Waves
Zhuang Chang, Ben You, Lin-Sheng Wu, Senior Member, IEEE, Min Tang, Member, IEEE, Yao-Ping
Zhang, and Jun-Fa Mao, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract A reconfigurable graphene reflectarray is proposed

for the generation of vortex radio waves at THz. First, a simple
sectored circular reflective surface model with a plane wave at
normal incidence is constructed to illustrate how vortex radio
waves can be generated. Then, a graphene reflective cell is
examined to demonstrate that the reflection coefficient can be
controlled by changing the chemical potential and size of the
graphene patch. Next, the sectored circular reflective surface is
realized with the graphene reflective cells that are properly sized,
arranged, and biased to satisfy the required reflection coefficients
for various modes of vortex radio waves. Finally, the graphene
reflectarray is excited with a horn antenna, showing from
simulations that it can be dynamically reconfigured to generate
the 0, 1 and 2 modes of vortex radio waves at 1.6 THz.
Index TermsGraphene, reconfiguration, reflectarray antenna,
vortex THz wave

I. INTRODUCTION

RPHENE, a planar structure built up by carbon atoms in

honeycomb lattice, has many extraordinary properties [1].
Hence, it has been exploited intensively in many fields, hoping
to revolutionize conventional devices by overcoming their
inherent limitations [2]. The use of graphene for antennas has
also been attempted. It is shown that graphene antennas with
good efficiency cannot be realized at microwave frequencies;
however, they might still be interesting for transparency and
mechanical flexibility, in applications where low efficiency is
tolerated [3]. It is expected that graphene antennas will find
most applications at THz due to the fact that graphene supports
low-loss plasmonic resonances and conventional metallic and
dielectric materials for antennas become quite lossy [4].
Therefore, considerable effort has been made in the design of
THz graphene antennas, for example, Huang, et al. designed a
pattern-reconfigurable THz antenna on a switchable highimpedance surface using a single-layer graphene [5], and
Morote, et al. designed a sinusoidally modulated graphene
leaky-wave antenna for electronic beamscanning at THz [6].
On the other hand, vortex radio waves, also known as
Manuscript received September 30, 2015. This work was supported by the
National Natural Science Foundations of China under Grants 61331004 and
61361166010.
The authors are with the Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education of Design
and Electromagnetic Compatibility of High-Speed Electronic Systems,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail:
wallish@sjtu.edu.cn).

electromagnetic waves with orbital angular momentum (OAM),

can theoretically provide infinite orthogonal states. Recently, it
has been demonstrated that by transmitting eight multiplexed
OAM radio waves in a millimeter-wave communication link,
the spectral efficiency can be largely increased [7]. However, it
should be noted that OAM is in fact the subset of MIMO system
and can not bring any capacity gain compared with MIMO [8],
[9]. Within an OAM-based communication system, the
generation of vortex radio waves is an essential part; therefore a
few techniques have been proposed and demonstrated,
respectively, from tens of MHz to tens of GHz. One technique
is to use dipole antennas arranged in a circle, fed with uniform
amplitude and element-by-element delayed phase at 29.98
MHz [10]. Another technique is to use planar-spiral phase plate
to generate single- and mixed-mode OAM waves at 94 GHz
[11]. However, it is difficult for the both two methods to
generate reconfigurable vortex radio waves at terahertz. The
first method needs a very short conversion time shorter than 1
ps even for the excitation which cannot be easily realized in
practice. The second method can only generate several fixed
modes simultaneously through a designed structure. Therefore,
the authors proposed a THz graphene reflectarray and reported
the simulated results of different graphene patches with
designed parameters located at specific positions in the
reflectarray, to transform the incident plane waves into vortex
radios [12]. The reflectarray was excited only by plane wave
and also not reconfigurable.
In this letter, we propose to generate vortex radio waves at
THz through a reconfigurable graphene reflectarray. In Section
II, a simple sectored circular reflective surface model with a
plane wave at normal incidence is constructed to illustrate how
vortex radio waves can be generated. It is demonstrated that by
properly arranging the reflection phase of the reflective surface,
the vortex radio waves with different OAM modes can be
generated. In Section III, a graphene reflective cell is examined
to demonstrate that the reflection coefficient can be controlled
by changing the chemical potential and size of graphene
patches. In Section IV, the sectored circular reflective surface is
realized with the graphene reflective cells and is excited with a
horn antenna. The simulated results show that the generated
mode of vortex wave can be dynamically reconfigured at 1.6
THz. Finally, the conclusion is drawn in Section V.
II. SECTORED CIRCULAR REFLECTIVE SURFACE
In order to illustrate the generation of vortex radio waves, a

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2519545, IEEE
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simple sectored circular reflective surface model with a
normally incident plane wave is shown in Fig. 1. Note that the
circular reflective surface consists of N sectors. All sectors are
required to yield the same magnitude of reflection with phase
variation incremented by an integer multiple l of 2 over one
circle. Therefore, one can express the reflection coefficient of
the n-th sector as

modes, with the orders illustrated by l, of vortex radio waves

have been successfully generated through the proposed model.
Therefore, the vortex radio waves of mode l can be generated
if the n-th sector has phase shift n=0+2nl/N, where N is the
number of sectors. The mode order l and the number of sectors
N should satisfy the relation N/2<l<N/2. Therefore, for the
generation of modes l=0, 1 and 2, the number of sectors N=8
is sufficient; while for higher modes, it can be easily realized by
increasing the number of sectors.
III. GRAPHENE REFLECTIVE CELL

Reflected Wave

2l

Incident Wave

3l / 2

l / 2

Fig. 1. The reflective surface model which consists of N sectors with varying
phase from 0 to 2l and excited by plane wave.

n = 0 e jn , n 0, 1,

, N 1

(1)

where 0 0 e j0 is the reflection coefficient of the initial

sector, 0 and 0 are the reflection magnitude and phase
respectively, and n is the phase shift of the n-th sector.
Moreover, if all sectors yield a total reflection (|0|=1), the
surface impedance of the n-th sector can be obtained as

Z n 0

1 n
1 e j (0 n )

0
j0 cot 0 n . (2)
j (0 n )
1 n
1 e
2

As illustrated in Section II, a reflective surface with a full

range of 360phase variation and constant reflective magnitude
is essential for the generation of vortex radio waves. In this
section, a graphene reflective cell is examined.
As shown in Fig. 3, the proposed reflective cell consists of a
square graphene patch with the size a, connected by graphene
ribbons with the width al=0.2 m. A DC voltage is applied
between the graphene patch and a 50-nm thick silicon layer
through a 10-nm thick alumina layer. Quartz (r=3.75,
tan=0.0184) is applied as the substrate with platinum
grounded, the period of the square substrate is as=14 m, the
thickness is h=25 m. It is noted that although the ohmic loss in
metal has become larger in terahertz than in lower frequencies,
the platinum can still be regarded as a good reflector in our
simulation at 1.6 THz. The graphene patch resonates when
a0/24~d/12 and as0/16, where 0 and d are the
wavelengths in free space and substrate, respectively [12]. In
our simulation, thin silicon and alumina layers can be neglected
due to their little effect on the cell response.

If we set the reflection phase 0 of the initial sector to be 0, for

different phase shift n, the reflective surface will show
different reflective behaviors. For example, the surface can be
regarded as a magnetic wall for n=0, an electric wall for
n=180, and reactance walls for other values, respectively.
Fig. 3. Graphene reflective cell [13].

Due to graphenes one-atom thickness, it can be modeled as

an infinitely thin sheet with a complex surface conductivity ,
which is approximated by the Drude model [14]. It should be
mentioned that graphene has be modeled as a true 2D material
rather than thin 3D material in this letter.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. Phase fronts of the proposed structure with different l: (a) l=1; and (b)
l=2.

In our model, if we set N=8 and l=0, 1, 2, the successive

phase step from a sector to another is 0, 45 and 90,
respectively. The observed area of the phase fronts is placed
above the reflective surface and perpendicular to z axis. All
models in this letter are simulated in the commercial software
ANSYS HFSS 15.0. Simulated results with different l are shown
in Fig. 2. A change in color from blue to red corresponds to a
change in phase from 0to 360. It is evident that different

kcT

qe2 k BT
c
2

2 ln e B 1

1 j k BT

(3)

where qe is the elementary charge, kB is the Boltzmann's

constant,
is the reduced Planks constant, T is the room
temperature, is the relaxation time, is the radian frequency,
and c is chemical potential. In this letter, the room temperature
is set to T=300 K, the relaxation time of graphene is =1 ps, and
the chemical potential c is a variable which can be controlled
by externally electrical biasing, as c increases from 0 to 1 eV,
the applied voltage increases from 0 to 14.7 V [13].
Fig. 4 shows the simulated reflection coefficients at 1.6 THz

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2519545, IEEE
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of the graphene reflective cell as a function of graphene patch
size and chemical potential. It is seen that a full range of 0~360
can be successfully realized for the reflection phase. In practice,
the magnitude of reflection coefficient is usually required to be
larger than 0.7 so as to ensure the efficiency of reflectarray.
Therefore, only the graphene patch sizes and chemical
potentials outside the region encircled by the black line in Fig.
4(a) are selected for our design. For convenience, the same
contour is also plotted in Fig. 4(b). When a specific phase is
desired, the corresponding values of patch size and chemical
potential can be selected efficiently and clearly.
1.0

13.9

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2
0

IV. RECONFIGURABLE GRAPHENE REFLECTARRAY FOR

GENERATION OF VORTEX THZ WAVES
Fig. 5 shows the reconfigurable graphene reflectarray.
Excited with a horn antenna, it adopts the sectored circular
reflective surface and uses a larger number of graphene
reflective cells. The requirements on reflection phases can be
met through the parameters listed in Tables I and II, which are
obtained from Fig. 4(b). The desired reflection phases are
designed with 15 pairs of parameters, which are also marked on
Fig. 4. In order to generate desired modes of the vortex radio
wave dynamically, the sizes of graphene patches are fixed and
the chemical potentials vary with different biasing conditions to
reconfigure the reflectarray. To build such a reflectarray,
around 1,7008 graphene patches are utilized, resulting in a
size of diameter of 1.875 mm (10 wavelengths in free space).
The horn antenna is located at (0, 0, H), here H=0.938 mm. Its
waveguide diameter is Wd=187.5 m, waveguide length
Wl=187.5 m, horn diameter Hd=525 m, and horn length
Hl=375 m. The horn antenna wall thickness is Wt=3.75 m.
The main beam of the horn antenna is along z direction,
vertical to the reflectarray surface, with a 3-dB beamwidth of
24.6and the peak realized gain of 16.9 dBi.
Wd

(a)
13.9

Hl

360

Wl

300

Hd

250

z
H

200
150

100
50
0

(b)
Fig. 4. Reflection coefficients with different patch sizes and chemical
potentials at 1.6 THz: (a) magnitude; and (b) phases. The selected parameter
pairs are also marked, where the circles, pentagrams and squares correspond to
the modes of 0, 1 and 2, respectively.
TABLE I
GRAPHENE CHEMICAL POTENTIAL
Mode
Sector
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

-1

0.06
0.08
0.06
0.06
0.06
0.06
0.08
0.06

0
12.6

-2

0.00
0.12
0.00
1.00
0.18
0.68
1.00
0.28
0.44
0.68
0.40
0.20
0.40
0.68
0.00
0.28
1.00
1.00
0.18
1.00
0.28
0.12
0.00
0.20
Initial Phase 0 ()
0
45
0

30

Sector
Patch
Size

Unit: eV

TABLE II
GRAPHENE PATCH SIZE
1
2
3
4
10.8

12.9

12.6

12.6

0.20
0.28
1.00
0.00
0.20
0.44
0.68
0.00
90

Unit: m
7

12.9

10.8

12.6

Fig. 5. Reconfigurable graphene reflectarray where the dark and bright grey
colors correspond to different chemical potentials.

The observed area of phase fronts is placed at 120 above the

surface and perpendicular to the z axis. Similar results can be
achieved at different heights according to our simulation. It
should be mentioned that it is not an easy task to simulate such
a structure with a large observation distance at such a high
frequency. Fig. 6 shows the simulated 3D radiation pattern and
phase fronts at 1.6 THz. According to the phase front diagrams,
it is shown that the vortex radio waves with different modes l=0,
1 and 2 are successfully generated without changing the
graphene patch sizes. From the simulated radiation pattern, for
different modes of 0, 1, 1, 2 and 2, the peak realized gain is
17.8, 12.9, 13.8, 13.1 and 13.1 dBi, the average 3-dB
beamwidth is 10.6, 18.7, 19.0, 13.4and 13.4, the radiation
efficiency is 88.9%, 74.2%, 74.9%, 67.7% and 67.4%,
respectively. It is noted that, for lower values of relaxation time,
such as =0.3 ps, a full range of 0~360 can still be
successfully realized for the reflection phase, so the generation
of vortex radio waves will also be achieved. However, the
efficiency of the reflectarray will be decreased due to the

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smaller reflection magnitudes. The small difference between
the results for the +l mode and those for the l mode is mainly
due to the limited accuracy in full-wave simulations. The mode
of l=0 provides higher efficiency than the other modes, because
the graphene patches for l=0 are selected with larger reflection
magnitudes, as marked in Fig. 4(a). It is demonstrated that as
the mode order increases from 0 to 2, the reflected electric field
intensity at the center area decreases and the angle between the
main beam direction with the z axis increases from 0to 23.
Thus, the antenna located above the center of the reflectarray
will not have much effect on the reflected waves except for the
case of l=0. This also implies that the detection radius vertical
to z axis should be properly selected to ensure the receiving
position not be trapped into the null zone of specific modes.
dB (GainTotal)
17.85
11.22
4.59
-2.04
-8.67
-0.15
-0.22
-0.29
-0.35
-0.42

V. CONCLUSION
In this letter, the simple sectored circular reflective surface
model with the plane wave at normal incidence was first
constructed to illustrate how vortex radio waves could be
generated and then the graphene reflective cell was examined to
demonstrate that the reflection coefficient could be controlled
by changing the chemical potential and size of graphene
patches. More importantly, based on the above concept and the
proposed graphene reflective cells, a reflectarray was realized
at THz. When excited by a horn antenna, the reflectarray could
be reconfigured with different biasing conditions for the
generation of the 0, 1 and 2 modes of vortex radio waves at
1.6 THz for the first time. The reconfigurable graphene
reflectarray proposed in this letter is a novel research of vortex
radio waves through graphene and it is very promising for
future applications in THz communication systems.
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[1]
[2]

(a)
dB (GainTotal)
12.89
7.23
1.59
-4.09
-9.76
-0.15
-0.21
-0.27
-0.32
-0.38

[3]

[4]

[5]
(b)

dB (GainTotal)
13.77
8.22
2.68
-2.85
-8.40
-0.14
-0.19
-0.25
-0.31
-0.36

[6]

[7]

(c)
dB (GainTotal)
13.09
7.93
2.78
-2.38
-7.52
-0.13
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[8]

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(d)
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(e)

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waves with the modes: (a) l=0; (b) l=1; (c) l=1; (d) l=2; and (e) l=2.

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