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Lamellar gratings are investigated via temporal coupled-mode theory and numerical simulations. Total absorption can be achieved by an optimized grating with shallow grooves under normal incidence and the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) is only 0.4 nm. For certain wavelengths, the structure shows high absorption only within an ultra-narrow angle, which suggests that it can be used as a highly directional thermal emitter according to Kirchhoff's law. Besides, the resonant wavelength is sensitive to the refractive index of the environmental dielectric. The large sensitivity (1400  nm/RIU) and simultaneous small FWHM result in a huge figure-of-merit of 2300/RIU, which enables the structure to have great potential in plasmonic sensing.

Two-dimensional (2D) topological insulators (TIs) with large band gaps are of great importance for the future applications of quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect. Employing ab initio electronic calculations we propose a novel type of 2D topological insulators, the monolayer (ML) low-buckled (LB) mercury telluride (HgTe) and mercury selenide (HgSe), with tunable band gap. We demonstrate that LB HgTe (HgSe) monolayers undergo a trivial insulator to topological insulator transition under in-plane tensile strain of 2.6% (3.1%) due to the combination of the strain and the spin orbital coupling (SOC) effects. Furthermore, the band gaps can be tuned up to large values (0.2 eV for HgTe and 0.05 eV for HgSe) by tensile strain, which far exceed those of current experimentally realized 2D quantum spin Hall insulators. Our results suggest a new type of material suitable for practical applications of 2D TI at room-temperature.

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Three different types of polarization-sensitive perfect absorbers are designed and numerically investigated. The bottle-like and the cup-like absorbers are narrowband absorbers, which strongly absorb light of a specific polarization and reflect almost all light of another polarization. By varying the geometric parameters, their absorption peaks can be tuned from 1300 nm to 2300 nm and 700 nm to 1400 nm, respectively. The broadband absorber is polarization-sensitive as well, exhibiting an average absorption efficiency of 88% over a wide range of wavelength (700-2300 nm). The proposed absorbers may have potential applications in polarization detectors, polarizers etc.

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