Inherent Trap-Resilience in Quasi-1D Metadevices for RF Switching Applications

Quasi-1D metadevices have emerged as promising candidates for microwave and millimeter-wave applications due to their exceptionally high switching cutoff frequency. Here, we investigate their memory effect and dynamic performance, showing negligible degradation, outperforming conventional electronic metadevices. Through scattering-parameter measurements under double sweep conditions, as well as time-resolved experiments, we observe robust dynamic performance in unpassivated quasi-1D metadevices fabricated on an InAlN/GaN epitaxy grown on a SiC substrate. Notably, our results demonstrate that reducing the subwavelength feature size, which is known to improve the cutoff frequency, also significantly enhances the dynamic performance of quasi-1D metadevices. Our experiments show nearly degradation-free operation in quasi-1D metadevices under 5 V switching, while at 10 V and 20 V switching, the devices exhibit up to approximately tenfold lower ON-resistance degradation compared to conventional counterparts. According to our simulations, this behavior is likely due to the device’s inherent resilience against partial depletion arising from virtual gating. These results highlight the potential of quasi-1D electronic metadevices for next-generation high-frequency integrated circuits.