Dual-band wide-angle metamaterial perfect absorber based on the combination of localized surface plasmon resonance and Helmholtz resonance

Selective-wavelength perfect infrared absorption in Ag@ZnO conical metamaterial structure

We present a new selective Metamaterial Perfect Absorber (MPA) consisting of zinc oxide embedded silver (Ag@ZnO), designed for applications in infrared stealth technology. The numerical simulation included a wide frequency range from 1 to 1000 THz and shows that the design MPA structure presented two absorption peaks at the desired wavelengths of 1.7 µm and 6.5 µm. The absorptivity of both peaks reached approximately 93.1% and 93.5%. The first peak at 1.7 µm decreases the scattering of IR laser beams from the surface of the MPA structure and also lowers the infrared tracks that could direct laser-guided devices to its specific target. On the other hand, the second peak reduces the surface heat wave. The suggested MPA (Ag@ZnO) structure is activated by a plane wave using a full wave vector and a broad frequency domain solution. In the framework of computer simulation technology (CST) Microwave Studio, uses both Finite-Difference-Time-Domain (FDTD) and Finite-Element-Method (FEM) techniques to predict the optical behavior of the proposed MPA structure. Both peaks achieved a high value of absorptivity due to the simultaneous excitation of the electric and magnetic dipole at resonance wavelength.

Compatible camouflage for dual-band guided-laser radar and infrared via a metamaterial perfect absorber

Laser-guided detector and infrared detection have attracted increasing attention in a wide range of research fields, including multispectral detection, radiative cooling, and thermal management. Previously reported absorbers presented shortcomings of lacking either tunability or compatibility. In this study, a metamaterial perfect absorber based on a Helmholtz resonator and fractal structure is proposed, which realizes tunable perfect absorptivity (α 1.06μ m >0.99,α 10.6μ m >0.99) of guided-laser radar dual operating bands (1.06 µm and 10.6 µm) and a low infrared average emissivity (ε¯3-5μ m =0.03,ε¯8-14μ m =0.31) in two atmospheric windows for compatible camouflage. The proposed perfect absorber provides a dynamically tunable absorptivity without structural changes and can be applied to optical communication, military stealth or protection, and electromagnetic detection.

Single-layer multifunctional metasurface for laser-infrared-microwave compatible stealth

This paper presents a novel approach for achieving a multifunctional metasurface capable of multiband compatible stealth. The metasurface is designed with a single-layer metallic structure that integrates functions of radar cross-section (RCS) reduction, laser stealth, and infrared shielding simultaneously. The reduction of RCS is achieved by developing two sub-cells that employ the interference cancellation principle, leading to a 10 dB decrease in RCS across a broad frequency range of 13-21 GHz. The laser stealth capability is attained by implementing a chessboard phase distribution in the array, also based on the interference cancellation principle, efficiently cancelling the specular reflection at the laser wavelength of 1.06 µm. The significant difference in wavelength between microwaves and lasers ensures that their operational characteristics do not interfere with each other. Additionally, the metasurface exhibits an infrared shielding property with an extremely low emissivity (less than 0.03) in the infrared atmosphere window of 3-5 µm and 8-14 µm, enabling the infrared stealth capability. The proposed metasurface demonstrates exceptional performance and has an extremely thin single-layer structure, indicating that it has a promising potential for future applications in multiband compatible stealth.

Plasmon Resonance in a System of Bi Nanoparticles Embedded into (Al,Ga)As Matrix

We reveal the feasibility of the localized surface plasmon resonance in a system of Bi nanoparticles embedded into an AlxGa1-xAs semiconductor matrix. With an ab initio determined dielectric function for bismuth and well-known dielectric properties of AlxGa1-xAs solid solution, we performed calculations of the optical extinction spectra for such metamaterial using Mie's theory. The calculations demonstrate a strong band of the optical extinction using the localized surface plasmons near a photon energy of 2.5 eV. For the semiconducting matrices with a high aluminum content x>0.7, the extinction by plasmonic nanoparticles plays the dominant role in the optical properties of the medium near the resonance photon energy.

Thin-Film Solar Energy Absorber Structure for Window Coatings for Self-Sufficient Futuristic Buildings

Energy-efficient buildings are a new demand in the current era. In this paper, we present a novel metamaterial design aimed at achieving efficient solar energy absorption through a periodic MMA structure composed of a W-GaAs-W. The proposed structure can be implemented as the window coating and in turn it can absorb the incident solar energy and, then, this energy can be used to fulfill the energy demand of the building. Our results reveal significant improvements, achieving an average absorptance of 96.94% in the spectral range. Furthermore, we explore the influence of the angle of incidence on the absorber's response, demonstrating its angle-insensitive behavior with high absorption levels (above 90%) for incidence angles up to 60° for TE polarization and 40° for TM polarization. The proposed structure presents a significant advancement in metamaterial-based solar energy absorption. By exploring the effects of structural parameters and incident angles, we have demonstrated the optimized version of our proposed absorber. The potential applications of this metamaterial absorber in self-sufficient futuristic building technologies and self-sustaining systems offer new opportunities for harnessing solar energy and are a valuable contribution to future developments in the fields of metamaterials and renewable energy.

High-performance terahertz refractive index sensor for cancer cells detection

Metamaterial absorbers in the terahertz region are highly desirable in sensing and detection. In this work, a novel terahertz refractive index sensor based on metamaterial absorber for sensing biomedical samples is reported. The proposed structure consists of three asymmetrical metallic resonators made of gold placed above on a gallium arsenide (GaAs) dielectric layer. Due to high-intensity field confinement in the sensing regime, four resonance modes with nearly 100% absorption are achieved with a high Q-factor of 456.5 in the absorption spectra. The design absorber is highly sensitive to the change of refractive index of the surrounding medium. Furthermore, the proposed sensor exhibits extremely high sensitivity of 1.87 THz/RIU and high FOM of 125 RIU^-1 in the refractive index range from 1.35 to 1.39 with fixed analyte thickness of 45 µm. The design RI sensor can be fitted for biomedical sensing applications such sensing and detection of various cancerous cell as the RI varied in the range of 1.35-1.39. In addition, the design sensor has the ability to sense early stage infection of cancer cells with any of its four absorption bands due to its high quality factor, high sensitivity and high figure of merit.

Phase change metamaterial for tunable infrared stealth and camouflage

In the paper, a type of phase change metamaterial for tunable infrared stealth and camouflage is proposed and numerically studied. The metamaterial combines high temperature resistant metal Mo with phase-changing material GST and can be switched between the infrared "stealthy" and "non-stealthy" states through the phase change process of the GST. At the amorphous state of GST, there is a high absorption peak at the atmospheric absorption spectral range, which can achieve infrared stealth in the atmospheric window together with good radiative heat dissipation in the non-atmospheric window. While at the crystalline state of GST, the absorption peak becomes broader and exhibits high absorption in the long-wave infrared atmospheric window, leading to a "non-stealthy" state. The relationship between the infrared stealth performance of the structure with the polarization and incident angle of the incident light is also studied in detail. The proposed infrared stealth metamaterial employs a simple multilayer structure and could be fabricated in large scale. Our work will promote the research of dynamically tunable, large scale phase change metamaterials for infrared stealth as well as energy and other applications.

Multiband infrared emissions limited in the grazing angle from metal-dielectric-metal metamaterials

Thermal radiation management remains a challenge because of the incoherent and isotropic nature of electromagnetic waves. In this study, a multiband and angular-selective infrared emitter, consisting of a simple one-dimensional (1D) metal-dielectric-metal metamaterial, is demonstrated. Although this structure has been well known as spectrally selective emitters, we analytically reveal that when the dielectric layer thickness is much smaller than the wavelength of interest (< 1/10), directive emission at nearly equal to the grazing angles (> 80°) can be obtained at multiple resonant wavelengths. As the absorption peaks can be entirely characterized by geometrical parameters, this angular selective technology offers flexible control of thermal radiation and can be adjusted to specific applications.

Biosensing on a Plasmonic Dual-Band Perfect Absorber Using Intersection Nanostructure

Optical absorbers with multiple absorption channels are required in integrated optical circuits and have always been a challenge in visible and near-infrared (NIR) region. This paper proposes a perfect plasmonic absorber (PPA) that consists of a closed loop and a linked intersection in a unit cell for sensitive biosensing applications. We elucidate the physical nature of finite element method simulations through the absorptance spectrum, electric field intensity, magnetic flux density, and surface charge distribution. The designed PPA achieves triple channels, and the recorded dual-band absorptance reaches 99.64 and 99.00% nm, respectively. Besides, the sensitivity can get 1000.00 and 650 nm/RIU for mode 1 and mode 2, respectively. Our design has a strong electric and magnetic field coupling arising from the mutual inductance and the capacitive coupling in the proposed plasmonic system. Therefore, the designed structure can serve as a promising option for biosensors and other optical devices. Here, we illustrated two examples, i.e., detecting cancerous cells and diabetes cells.

Efficient Broadband Truncated-Pyramid-Based Metamaterial Absorber in the Visible and Near-Infrared Regions

We present a design of an ultra-broadband metamaterial absorber in the visible and near- infrared regions. The unit cell structure consists of a single layer of metallic truncated-pyramid resonator-dielectric-metal configuration, which results in a high absorption over a broad wavelength range. The absorber exhibits 98% absorption at normal incidence spanning a wideband range of 417–1091 nm, with >99% absorption within 822–1054 nm. The broadband absorption stability maintains 95% at large incident angles up to 40° for the transverse electric (TE)-mode and 20° for the transverse magnetic (TM)-mode. Furthermore, the polarization-insensitive broadband absorption is presented in this paper by analyzing absorption performance with various polarization angles. The proposed absorber can be applied for applications such as solar cells, infrared detection, and communication systems thanks to the convenient and compatible bandwidth for electronic THz sources.

A theoretical investigation on reciprocity-inspired wide-angle spectrally-selective THz absorbers augmented by anisotropic metamaterials

In this paper, a theoretical framework relying on the reciprocity theorem is proposed to accurately design a spectrally-selective THz superstrate-loaded metamaterial absorber (SLMA) exhibiting wide-angle feature. By leveraging high-order Floquet harmonics in a generalized transmission line model characterizing the conventional metamaterial absorbers (MAs), it is demonstrated that MAs suffer from impedance mismatch, especially at near grazing angles. From an impedance matching viewpoint, this major challenge is tackled in this paper via two different designs, exploiting a magneto-electric anisotropic Huygens' metamaterial and a multilayer dielectric structure at a certain distance over the MA plane. The numerical results corroborate well the theoretical predictions, elucidating that the proposed SLMA significantly broadens the angular performance of the MA up to near grazing angles (about 80°), where high absorptivity is still achieved in both principal planes. The deteriorating effect of diffraction modes has been comprehensively analyzed. In comparison to the previous wide-angle MA reports based on intricate particle geometries and brute-force optimizations, the proposed design features a straightforward semi-analytical algorithm, which can also be re-developed for microwave, mid-infrared, and optical frequency bands and for any type of MA element. The proposed SLMA would be very promising for various wavelength-selective applications such as sensors and imaging.

Hierarchical metamaterials for laser-infrared-microwave compatible camouflage

In this paper, a hierarchical metamaterial (HMM) is reported to achieve compatible camouflage for laser, thermal infrared detectors, and radar. The HMM consists of an all-metallic metasurface array (AMMA) integrated with a microwave absorber. The top AMMA plays two roles. First, the gradient metasurface can reduce the specular reflection at the laser wavelength of 1.06 µm to less than 5% by tailoring the wavefronts and redirecting the reflected energy to non-specular angles. Second, the AMMA acts as an infrared shielding and microwave transparent layer, ultralow surface emissivity (∼5%) in the infrared atmosphere window of 3-5 µm and 8-14 µm can be realized, and incident microwave can perfectly pass through the top AMMA and then be absorbed by the bottom microwave absorber. The absorption efficiency is over 90% in the broadband of 7-12.7 GHz up to incident angles of 40° for both TE and TM polarizations. These excellent performances indicate that our proposed HMM has promising applications in multispectral camouflage fields.

Theoretical Investigation of a Simple Design of Triple-Band Terahertz Metamaterial Absorber for High-Q Sensing

This paper presents a simple metamaterial design to achieve the triple-band near-perfect absorption response that can be used in the area of sensor application. The introduced absorber consists of an array of Au strip and a bulk flat Au film separated by an insulator dielectric layer. Three narrow-band resonance absorption peaks are obtained by superposing three different modes (a fundamental mode resonance and two high-order responses) of the Au strip. These resonance modes (in particular of the last two modes) have large sensitivity to the changes of the surrounding index, overlayer thickness and the refractive index of the overlayer.

Ultra-broadband infrared metasurface absorber: comment

In a recently published report, an ultra-broadband gradient-metasurface-based absorber (GMBA) with a single layer of metasurface is proposed by Guo et al [Opt. Express24(18), 20586 (2016)] to realize the ultra-broadband perfect absorption. Moreover, the bandwidth of absorption can be broadened by increasing a layer metasurface on the basis of single-layered GMBA. This comment demonstrates that the cross-polarization reflection is neglected by the authors, when they calculate the total absorption in the proposed GMBAs. It is found that there are only two absorption peaks at 8.09 μm and 9.84 μm with real absorption rates of 58.4% and 57.1% in a single-layered GMBA.

Polarization-independent and angle-insensitive broadband absorber with a target-patterned graphene layer in the terahertz regime

We propose a broadband tunable metamaterial absorber with near-unity absorption in the terahertz regime based on a target-patterned graphene sheet. Due to gradient diameter modulation of the graphene sheet and circular symmetry of the unit cell, broadband and polarization-independent properties are achieved in the absorber. A full-wave numerical simulation is performed, and the results show that the absorber's bandwidth of 90% terahertz absorption reaches 1.57 THz with a central frequency of 1.83 THz under normal incidence. At oblique incidence, the broadband absorption of the absorber remains more than 75% over a wide incidence angles up to 60°for the transverse electric (TE) mode and 75°for the transverse magnetic (TM) mode. Furthermore, tunable property is implemented and the peak absorption of the absorber can be tuned from 19% to near 100% by changing the Fermi energy of the graphene sheet from 0 to 0.9 eV via electrostatic doping. The absorber is scalable to the infrared and visible frequencies, which could be used as tunable sensors, filters and photovoltaic devices.

Electromagnetic wave absorption and structural properties of wide-band absorber made of graphene-printed glass-fibre composite

Lightweight composites combining electromagnetic wave absorption and excellent mechanical properties are required in spacecraft and aircraft. A one- dimensional metamaterial absorber consisting of a stack of glass fibre/epoxy layers and graphene nanoplatelets/epoxy films was proposed and fabricated through a facile air-spraying based printing technology and a liquid resin infusion method. The production process allows an optimum dispersion of graphene nanoplatelets, promoting adhesion and mechanical integration of the glass fibre/epoxy layers with the graphene nanoplatelets/epoxy films. According to experimental results, the proposed wide-band absorber provides a reflection coefficient lower than -10 dB in the range 8.5-16.7 GHz and an improvement of flexural modulus of more than 15%, with a total thickness of ∼1 mm. Outstanding electromagnetic wave absorption and mechanical performance make the proposed absorber more competitive in aeronautical and aerospace applications.

Large-Area, Cost-Effective, Ultra-Broadband Perfect Absorber Utilizing Manganese in Metal-Insulator-Metal Structure

Achieving broadband absorption has been a topic of intensive research over the last decade. However, the costly and time consuming stage of lithography has always been a barrier for the large-area and mass production of absorbers. In this work, we designed, fabricated, and characterized a lithography-free, large-area compatible, omni-directional, ultra-broadband absorber that consists of the simplest geometrical configuration for absorbers: Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM). We introduced and utilized Manganese (Mn) for the first time as a very promising metal for broadband absorption applications. We optimized the structure step-by-step and compared Mn against the other best candidates introduced so far in broadband absorption structures and showed the better performance of Mn compared to them. It also has the advantage of being cheaper compared to metals like gold that has been utilized in many patterned broadband absorbers. We also presented the circuit model of the structure. We experimentally achieved over 94 percent average absorption in the range of 400-900 nm (visible and above) and we obtained absorption as high as 99.6 percent at the wavelength of 626.4 nm. We also experimentally demonstrated that this structure retains broadband absorption for large angles up to 70 degrees.