Takehito Suzuki received his B.E., M.E., and D.E. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2004, 2006, and 2009, respectively. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and proceeded with research in the millimeter waveband. From 2009, he was an Assistant Professor with the College of Engineering, Ibaraki University, Ibaraki, Japan and started research in the terahertz waveband. In 2015, he was promoted to a Lecturer with the College of Engineering, Ibaraki University. Since 2017, he has been an Associate Professor with the Division of Advanced Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. Since 2018, he has been a PRESTO Researcher for thermal control with the Japan Science and Technology Agency.He has challenged academic problems about how to arbitrarily manipulate the refractive index, reflection, and the transmission of materials in high frequencies. As a planar array of meta-atoms, a metasurface produces reflection-less transparent characteristics with an extremely high refractive index, zero refractive index, and negative refractive index from 0.3 to 3.0 THz, for use in information and communication technology in future advanced generations.
He produced a metasurface with an extremely high refractive index of 12－j0.92 and a reflection of 5.1% in the terahertz waveband. This refractive index is more than three times as high as that of a naturally occurring material with a high refractive index such as Si (n=3.4) and MgO (n=3.1). The ultra-thin metalenses consisting of this extremely high refractive index metasurface made possible the directivity enhancement of terahertz continuous-wave source by 4.2 times, which is promising for the use in IoT devices for 6G (beyond 5G) wireless communications. He also produced reflection-less transparent metasurfaces with a zero refractive index of 0.04－j0.07 and a reflection of 0.8% at 0.5 THz, and with a negative refractive index of －4.2－j0.17 and reflection of 4.3% at 0.42 THz. Further, he invented an extreme-sensitivity terahertz polarizer with high extinction ratios below approximately －50 dB. A patent was obtained for the terahertz polarizer, and a licensed company is commercializing the product.
As described above, we believe that his outstanding contributions to the fields of electronics, information, and communication are worthy of receiving this prestigious award. We also expect him to further accelerate scientific and technological progress and to become a leading researcher in the world.
