Recent progresses on metamaterials for optical absorption and sensing: a review

Abstract

Metamaterials (MMs) offer great potential for achieving optical absorption due to their novel electromagnetic properties. MM absorbers can overcome the thickness limitation and provide excellent absorption performance over the wide frequency range, thereby enable the swift emergence of some promising applications. Moreover, the optical sensors based on MM absorbers have shown great potential in several fields. This review concentrates on the recent progresses in MM-based optical absorbers and spectral sensing. We present four aspects of MM-based optical absorption: the metal-insulation-metal arrangements, the optical coherence, the functional materials, and some novel approaches. Also, we present three aspects of MM-based optical sensing: the refractive index sensing, gas and molecule sensing, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Finally, the current challenges and prospects in device designs, fabrications have been discussed. This review is with the purpose to give a generalized knowledge of MMs for optical absorption and sensing, thus inspiring the investigations on MMs for other devices and their practical applications.

Surface Plasmonic Sensors: Sensing Mechanism and Recent Applications

“…While the air instability is a serious issue for sodium-based plasmonic devices, researchers have demonstrated the stability of performance through appropriate packaging by quartz and epoxy [ 280 ]. In terms of fabrication method, electron beam lithography and focused ion beam are typical top-down methods to fabricate nanoscale plasmonic devices, which are not considered to be massive productive for their high cost and time consuming [ 281 ]. More cost-effective methods such as self-assembly (bottom-up) techniques [ 282 , 283 ] and nanoimprint lithography [ 277 , 284 ] hold great potentials for the commercialization.…”

A Tunable “Ancient Coin”-Type Perfect Absorber with High Refractive Index Sensitivity and Good Angular Polarization Tolerance

“…For example, these absorbers are always linked with polarization sensitivity, and the commonly used multi-frequency absorbers designed based on the frequency superposition method [59,60] are complicated in structure. In addition, in actual manufacturing processes, a series of technical problems such as large battery size and high requirements for manufacturing technology accuracy can occur [61]. Therefore, a new method to realize dual-band perfect metamaterial absorbers based on graphene must be found urgently.…”

Ultranarrow and Tunable Fano Resonance in Ag Nanoshells and a Simple Ag Nanomatryushka

“…Engineering Fano resonance (FR) in plasmonic nanostrucures and artificial metamaterials has become an important research focus in recent years due to its wide applications such as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [ 1 ], refractive-index sensing or biosensing sensors [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], plasmon rulers [ 8 ], molecular identification [ 9 ], slow-light devices [ 10 ], narrow-band absorbers [ 11 ], nonlinear optical processes [ 12 , 13 ], and so on. FR primally charcterized by the intrinsic sharp asymmetric line-shape in the far-field spectrum and the large electromagnetic field enhancement in the near-field, which results from the constuctive and destructive far-field interferences with strong interacitons between the narrow subradiant (dark) modes and the broad superradiant (bright) plasmon resonances [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”