Design and measurement of a narrow band metamaterial absorber in terahertz range

doi:10.1016/j.optmat.2020.109712

Optical Materials

Volume 100, February 2020, 109712

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2020.109712 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
This absorption peak is enhanced and its resonance frequency is shifted with structural parameters changing.
•
High absorption performance is revealed when the incident angle reaches 48⁰.
•
The effect of three gases on this absorption peak is also measured.

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed and measured a metamaterial absorber with cross metal array in 12–28 THz range. A narrow absorption band (the absorption amplitude is 96%) is obtained at resonance frequency 19.24 THz, which is excited by the bright-bright modes coupling effect. Impedance matching is achieved at this resonance frequency between samples and free space. This absorption peak is enhanced and its resonance frequency is shifted with lattice constant reducing or structural parameter w1 increasing. The absorption peak is highly sensitive to the variation of structural parameters due to the bright-bright modes coupling effect on the cross strips. An equivalent LC circuit mode is proposed to understand the physical mechanism of the resonance frequency shifting. The effect of three gases on this absorption peak is measured. Moreover, high absorption performance is revealed when the incident angle reaches 48⁰.

Introduction

In the last decades, metamaterial absorbers have become a scientific hotspot [[1], [2], [3]]. A variety of metamaterial absorbers with excellent performances have been confirmed in a broad frequency band [[4], [5], [6], [7]]. Niu et al. proposed a 2D photonic crystals absorber for solar thermophotovoltaics, which shows high performance and wide-angle absorption (average absorptivity is 84.5%) under 45° oblique incidence [8]. Wang et al. proposed and simulated a single-band metamaterial absorber in THz band, which demonstrated polarization-insensitive and wide-angle properties [9]. Ding et al. show a dual-band metamaterial absorber based on the interaction effect between LSP and SPP modes [10]. Shen et al. designed and measured a triple-band metamaterial absorber in 2–12 GHz, which revealed the polarization-independent and wide-angle properties [11]. Moreover, many schemes for modulating the operating frequency of the metamaterial absorber have been proposed, such as illumination, fluid filling, electronic charge, heat radiation, and so on [[12], [13], [14]]. Zhang et al. designed and measured a graphene–electrolyte–grapheme structure perfect absorber [15]. The absorptive properties can be controlled by changing Fermi level. Moreover, the absorption band is also can be modulated by stacking GSS layer. Another important modulation method is to modulate the absorption properties by changing the amount of stacked materials [[16], [17], [18], [19]]. For example, Wang, et al. proposed a one-dimensional photonic crystals, the bandwidth and center frequency can be controlled through changing the amount of stacking of Ge and ZnS layers [20]. Metamaterial absorbers can be used in a variety of fields [[21], [22], [23], [24]]. To date, different plasmonic metamaterial are applied in sensors [[25], [26], [27]]. Two obvious features are both revealed by these metamaterial absorbers: The first feature is that the working frequency segment can be moved largely. The second feature is that the absorption peak is a narrow band, which is sensitive to the changes of signals. Moreover, the electromagnetic wave loss is inevitable in plasmonic metallic metamaterials. Therefore, it makes sense to apply metamaterial absorber to the sensor [[28], [29], [30]]. The feasibility of metamaterial absorbers in the field of sensing has been proven by many works based on optimizing the electric-magnetic responses in the target band.

In this paper, a metamaterial absorber with cross metal array is designed and measured. A narrow absorption band is obtained at resonance frequency 19.24 THz. The effect of lattice constant and structural parameter w1 on the absorption peak is measured. Moreover, three kinds of gases are measured and obtained three absorption reactions. Finally, the effect of incident angle on the absorption peak is also revealed.

Section snippets

Unit cell, simulation, and experiments

The designed unit cell can be found in Fig. 1. This unit cell contains three layers: the top layer is a cross metal array, an intermediate medium layer, and a bottom metal layer. Metal layers can be given as follows: $ε (ω) = 1 - \frac{ω_{P}^{2}}{ω^{2} - i ω γ_{D}}$ Here, $γ_{D} = 9 \times 10^{13} s^{- 1}$ stands for the collision frequency, $ω_{p} = 1.37 \times 10^{16} s^{- 1}$ stands for the plasma frequency [31]. The thicknesses of metal layers and SU-8 layer are $t 1 = 0.05 μ m$ , $t 2 = 1.5 μ m$ , and $t 3 = 0.1 μ m$ , respectively, which results in a total thickness of $1.65 μ m$ .metamaterial.

Measurement results and discussion

The measured and simulated absorption spectrum is shown in Fig. 2. A highly absorption peak is achieved at resonance frequency 19.24 THz, the measured maximum value is 96%. The simulated result is revealed by HFSS. The simulated result is matched well with the measured result, as shown in Fig. 2. The difference between the measured and simualted results is mainly due to the experimental errors and idealization of simulation conditions. Since these errors are not obvious, the effectiveness of

Conclusion

We proposed and measured a narrow band metamaterial absorber based on the bright-bright modes coupling effect. The absorption peak is enhanced through reducing the lattice constant or increasing the structural parameter w1. Moreover, the resonance frequency can be controlled by changing structural parameters. The effect of three gases on this absorption peak is measured. This absorber can achieve an absorption rate of over 90% when the incident angle reaches 48⁰.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Min Zhong: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the Doctor's Scientific Research Foundation (No. HZUBS201503), the Young and Middle Teachers’ Basic Ability Improvement Project of Guangxi (No. KY2016YB453), the Mathematical Support Autonomous Discipline Project of Hezhou University (No. 2016HZXYSX01), and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Students Project of Hezhou University (Nos. 201611838018, 201911838062, 201911838071, 201911838179).

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View full text

Design and measurement of a narrow band metamaterial absorber in terahertz range

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Unit cell, simulation, and experiments

Measurement results and discussion

Conclusion

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgments

Phys. Scripta

Opt. Mater.

J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer

Ultra-wideband microwave absorber by connecting multiple absorption bands of two different sized hyperbolic metamaterial waveguide arrays

Sci. Rep.

Experimental realization of ultrathin, double-sided metamaterial perfect absorber at terahertz gap through stochastic design process

Sci. Rep.

Bozhevolnyi, Broadband near-infrared metamaterial absorbers utilizing highly lossy metals

Sci. Rep.

A subwavelength resolution microwave/6.3 GHz camera based on a metamaterial absorber

Sci. Rep.

A wide-angle planar metamaterial absorber based on split ring resonator coupling

J. Appl. Phys.

Coherent perfect absorption in deeply subwavelength films in the single-photon regime

Nat. Commun.

Miniaturization for ultrathin metamaterial perfect absorber in the VHF band

Sci. Rep.

Improved broadband spectral selectivity of absorbers/emitters for solar thermophotovoltaics based on 2D photonic crystal heterostructures

JOSA A

Dual-band perfect absorption and field enhancement by interaction between localized and propagating surface plasmons in optical metamaterials

J. Optic.

Light-driven tunable dual-band plasmonic absorber using liquid-crystal-coated asymmetric nanodisk array

Appl. Phys. Lett.

Mechanically stretchable and tunable metamaterial absorber

Appl. Phys. Lett.

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Appl. Phys. Lett.

Experimental demonstration of an electrically tunable broadband coherent perfect absorber based on a graphene–electrolyte–graphene sandwich structure

Photon. Res.

Effective strategy for visible-infrared compatible camouflage: surface graphical one-dimensional photonic crystal

Optic Lett.

Design and characterization of one-dimensional photonic crystals based on ZnS/Ge for infrared-visible compatible stealth applications

Opt. Mater.

Quasi-periodic photonic crystal Fabry–Perot optical filter based on Si/SiO2 for visible-laser spectral selectivity

J. Phys. D Appl. Phys.

Narrow band filter at 1550 nm based on quasi-one-dimensional photonic crystal with a mirror-symmetric heterostructure

Materials