Ultrathin and Electrically Tunable Metamaterial with Nearly Perfect Absorption in Mid-Infrared

Engineering van der Waals Materials for Advanced Metaphotonics

The outstanding chemical and physical properties of 2D materials, together with their atomically thin nature, make them ideal candidates for metaphotonic device integration and construction, which requires deep subwavelength light-matter interaction to achieve optical functionalities beyond conventional optical phenomena observed in naturally available materials. In addition to their intrinsic properties, the possibility to further manipulate the properties of 2D materials via chemical or physical engineering dramatically enhances their capability, evoking new science on light-matter interaction, leading to leaped performance of existing functional devices and giving birth to new metaphotonic devices that were unattainable previously. Comprehensive understanding of the intrinsic properties of 2D materials, approaches and capabilities for chemical and physical engineering methods, the resulting property modifications and novel functionalities, and applications of metaphotonic devices are provided in this review. Through reviewing the detailed progress in each aspect and the state-of-the-art achievement, insightful analyses of the outstanding challenges and future directions are elucidated in this cross-disciplinary comprehensive review with the aim to provide an overall development picture in the field of 2D material metaphotonics and promote rapid progress in this fast emerging and prosperous field.

Numerical Study of Multilayer Planar Film Structures for Ideal Absorption in the Entire Solar Spectrum

Here, we have theoretically proposed an ideal structure of selective solar absorber with multilayer planar films, which can absorb the incident light throughout the entire solar spectrum (300–2500 nm) and over a wide angular range, whatever the polarization angle of 0°~90°. The efficiency of the proposed absorber is proven by the Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulation. The average absorption rate over the solar spectrum is up to 96.6%. The planar design is extremely easy to fabricate and modify, and this structure does not require lithographic processes to finish the absorbers. Improvements of the solar absorber on the basis of planar multilayer-film structures is attributed to multiple asymmetric highly lossy Fabry–Perot resonators. Because of having many virtues, such as using different refractory and non-noble metals, having angle and polarization independence, and having ideal absorption for entire solar spectrum, our proposed absorbers are promising candidates for practical industrial production of the solar-energy harvesting.

Detailed Experiment-Theory Comparison of Mid-Infrared Metasurface Perfect Absorbers

Realisation of a perfect absorber A = 1 with transmittance and reflectance T = R = 0 by a thin metasurface is one of the hot topics in recent nanophotonics prompted by energy harvesting and sensor applications ( A + R + T = 1 is the energy conservation). Here we tested the optical properties of over 400 structures of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) metasurfaces for a range of variation in thickness of insulator, diameter of a disc and intra-disc distance both experimentally and numerically. Conditions of a near perfect absorption A > 95 % with simultaneously occurring anti-reflection property ( R < 5 % ) was experimentally determined. Differences between the bulk vs. nano-thin film properties at mid-IR of the used materials can be of interest for plasmonic multi-metal alloys and high entropy metals.

A Narrow Dual-Band Monolayer Unpatterned Graphene-Based Perfect Absorber with Critical Coupling in the Near Infrared

The combination of critical coupling and coupled mode theory in this study elevated the absorption performance of a graphene-based absorber in the near-infrared band, achieving perfect absorption in the double bands (98.96% and 98.22%), owing to the guided mode resonance (the coupling of the leak mode and guided mode under the condition of phase matching, which revealed 100% transmission or reflection efficiency in the wavelet band), and a third high-efficiency absorption (91.34%) emerged. During the evaluation of the single-structure, cross-circle-shaped absorber via simulation and theoretical analysis, the cross-circle shaped absorber assumed a conspicuous preponderance through exploring the correlation between absorption and tunable parameters (period, geometric measure, and incident angle of the cross-circle absorber), and by briefly analyzing the quality factors and universal applicability. Hence, the cross-circle resonance structure provides novel potential for the design of a dual-band unpatterned graphene perfect absorber in the near-infrared band, and possesses practical application significance in photoelectric detectors, modulators, optical switching, and numerous other photoelectric devices.