title: Broadband near-infrared metamaterial absorbers utilizing highly lossy metals.
abstract: Radiation absorbers have increasingly been attracting attention as crucial components for controllable thermal emission, energy harvesting, modulators, etc. However, it is still challenging to realize thin absorbers which can operate over a wide spectrum range. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate thin, broadband, polarization-insensitive and omnidirectional absorbers working in the near-infrared range. We choose titanium (Ti) instead of the commonly used gold (Au) to construct nano-disk arrays on the top of a silicon dioxide (SiO2) coated Au substrate, with the quality (Q) factor of the localized surface plasmon (LSP) resonance being decreased due to the intrinsic high loss of Ti. The combination of this low-Q LSP resonance and the propagating surface plasmon (PSP) excitation resonance, which occur at different wavelengths, is the fundamental origin of the broadband absorption. The measured (at normal light incidence) absorption is over 90% in the wavelength range from 900 nm to 1825 nm, with high absorption persisting up to the incident angle of ~40°. The demonstrated thin-film absorber configuration is relatively easy to fabricate and can be realized with other properly selected materials.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nano Optics, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials and Nano Physics, School of Information and Communication Technology, KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Electrum 229, 16440 Kista, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nano Optics, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Yiting
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentations, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Jianfei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentations, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nano Optics, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense, Denmark.
authors.forename: Sergey I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Bozhevolnyi