When physicists at the ARC Centre for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) needed a key component for their terahertz experiments, they ran into a frustrating problem—they needed tiny optical devices, known as wire-grid polarizers, but these cost thousands of dollars each.

“We were doing experiments in the terahertz frequency range and figured that some of the components—particularly polarizers—were extremely expensive,” says Professor Ilya Shadrivov from TMOS at The Australian National University. He is the co-author of a new study published in Optics and Laser Technology.

“So we looked at how they were made and thought, surely there’s a way to make them cheaper and faster.”