Time-varying coding digital double-layered Huygens' metasurface for high-efficiency harmonic frequency conversion

Time-varying metasurfaces offer an efficient means of controlling nonlinear harmonics by manipulating component geometries and modulating signals. This ability renders them valuable across various fields, such as wireless communication, radar sensing, and biological monitoring. However, most of the energy in time-varying metasurfaces is concentrated in the fundamental wave, as well as scattered at various harmonic orders, which reduces the energy efficiency at the desired harmonic. Existing approaches have employed time-varying coding digital metasurfaces to achieve efficient harmonic conversion but are primarily designed for reflection. Reflection-based designs require a feed source to excite the metasurface, which can cause certain shielding effects and limit their application in specific scenarios. Thus, designing transmissive time-varying coding digital metasurfaces for efficient harmonic conversion is currently an urgent problem that needs to be addressed. To solve this problem, this paper develops a time-varying coding digital double-layered Huygens' metasurface, which achieves efficient conversion of the desired transmitted harmonics. The unit structure of the metasurface consists of a pair of reverse-symmetric split rings located on the upper and lower sides of a dielectric substrate, enabling nearly non-reflective Huygens' resonance. Based on a continuous periodic phase modulation strategy, we achieved efficient conversion of transmitted harmonics by loading a time-varying voltage (phase) modulation signal with a 5-bit resolution bit width onto the designed double-layered Huygens' metasurface. This study presents a solution for designing a transmissive time-varying coding digital metasurface to achieve efficient conversion of harmonics, thereby enhancing the application capabilities of time-varying coding digital metasurfaces.