Ultra-broadband absorber from visible to near-infrared using plasmonic metamaterial

We propose a design of an ultra-broadband absorber based on a thin metamaterial nanostructure composed of a periodic array of titanium-silica (Ti-SiO2) cubes and an aluminum (Al) bottom film. The proposed structure can achieve nearly perfect absorption with an average absorbance of 97% spanning a broad range from visible to near-infrared (i.e., from 354 nm to 1066 nm), showing a 90% absorption bandwidth over 712 nm, and the peak absorption is up to 99.8%. The excitation of superior surface plasmon resonance combined with the resonance induced by the metal-insulator-metal Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity leads to this broadband perfect absorption. The polarization and angle insensitivity is demonstrated by analyzing the absorption performance with oblique incidences for both TE- and TM-polarized waves. In addition, we discuss the impact of various metal materials and geometry structure on absorption performance in detail. The proposed broadband metamaterial absorber shows a promising prospect in applications such as solar cell, infrared detection, and imaging. Moreover, the use of a thin titanium cap and an aluminum film instead of noble metals has the potential to reduce production cost in applications. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement