Polarization-dependent wideband metamaterial absorber for ultraviolet to near-infrared spectral range applications

Abstract

The need for wideband metamaterial absorbers (WBMA) for applications other than sensing and filtering has demanded modifications to the conventional three-layer metal-insulator-metal (MIM) absorber configuration. This modification often results in complex geometries and an increased number of layers requiring complex lithographic processes for fabrication. Here, we show that a metamaterial absorber with rectangular geometry in the simple MIM configuration can provide wideband absorption covering the ultraviolet and near-infrared spectral range. Due to its asymmetric nature, the WBMA is sensitive to the polarization of the incident light and independent of the angle of incidence up to about 45° depending on the polarization of the incident light. The characteristics of the WBMA presented here may be useful for applications such as detectors for wide spectral band applications.

Near-ideal absorption high oblique incident angle stable metamaterial structure for visible to infrared optical spectrum applications

“…The MA presented in [8,21] operated only for visible optical wavelength. On the other hand, the MA in [24][25][26] operated both visible and infrared regions with a lower operation bandwidth. The proposed MA shows higher oblique incident angle stability than [21,25,26]and higher average absorption than [8, 21] [26].…”

“…Similarly, another three-layer MA also shows only 45° incident angle stability, and the average absorption is less than 90%. The bending of the MA is also an important issue during the installation; however, except [8], the research work in [21] [24] [25] [26] does not show bending investigation. Despite all this research, there is still a high demand for an MA with a wide operating wavelength (visible to infrared), high incident angle stability, and low thickness capable of bending tolerance.…”

Review of Broadband Metamaterial Absorbers: From Principles, Design Strategies, and Tunable Properties to Functional Applications

“…[16][17][18][19] What is far more critical is that MAs have been revealed to effectively overcome the issues caused by functional electromagnetic devices, such as interference and electromagnetic pollution, because they could absorb the incident beam almost perfectly at the working frequency with the lowest transmission, reflection, and even scattering. [20][21][22][23] Owing to these excellent resonance characteristics and advanced construction technologies, MAs with various absorption properties, such as polarization insensitive, polarization dependent, wide-angle tolerance, and amplitude modulation, have been extensively reported over a wide frequency range operating from microwave to optical (and even UV), [24][25][26][27] and they show promising prospects in many fields in solar cells (or photovoltaics), [28][29][30] refractive index sensing, [31][32][33] thermal imaging, [34][35][36] IR detection, [37][38][39] surface-enhanced spectroscopy, [40] etc. However, due to the intrinsic dispersion of materials and strong resonance features of patterned arrays, the absorption performance of MAs, especially their resonance bandwidth is relatively narrow, which inevitably limits their applications.…”

Broadband polarization-sensitive metamaterial absorber based on ladder network construction in the infrared region

“…Optical resonators with asymmetric structures can excite polarization selectivity response [15][16][17][18] . Polarization sensitive metamaterial absorber can realize polarization selective absorption for incident radiation [19][20][21] , and has the advantages of small volume and easy integration 22,23 . It can replace the traditional polarizing devices, which is applied in polarization detection and imaging fields 24,25 .…”