Compact photonic-crystal superabsorbers from strongly absorbing media

Abstract

We present a route to near-perfect absorption in compact photonic-crystal (PC) structures constructed from strongly absorbing media that are typically highly reflective in bulk form. Our analysis suggests that the key underlying mechanism in such PC superabsorbers is the existence of a PC-band-edge reflectionless condition. Although the latter is by default uncharacteristic in photonic crystals, we propose here a clear recipe on how such condition can be met by tuning the structural characteristics of one-dimensional lossy PC structures. Based on this recipe, we constructed a realizable three-layer SiC-BaF 2 -SiC PC operating within the Reststrahlen band of SiC. We demonstrate near-perfect absorption in this prototype of total thickness smaller than k=3, where more than 90% of the impinging light is absorbed by the top deep-subwavelength layer of thickness $k=1100. We believe our study will inspire new photonic-crystal-based designs for extreme absorption harnessing across the electromagnetic spectrum. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Broadband Mid-IR superabsorption with aperiodic polaritonic photonic crystals

“…However, the recent results of Devarapu and Foteinopoulou [24,25] demonstrating near-perfect absorption with a SiC PC system seem promising in this direction. The underlying mechanism was a combination of a quickly vanishing lossy Floquet-Bloch mode [25,27] and tailoring of the energy velocity at the interface [24,25]. Careful engineering of such phenomenon has led to a compact-superabsorber design where 90% of light gets absorbed within the top absorbing layer of thickness λ/1000 [25].…”

“…An alternative route has been explored with photonic crystals (PCs) relying solely on the excitation of lossy Floquet-Bloch modes in a structure with a single kind of absorbing material [20]- [25]. In the Mid-IR regime mostly PCs with metallic constituents have been explored [23].…”

“…The underlying mechanism was a combination of a quickly vanishing lossy Floquet-Bloch mode [25,27] and tailoring of the energy velocity at the interface [24,25]. Careful engineering of such phenomenon has led to a compact-superabsorber design where 90% of light gets absorbed within the top absorbing layer of thickness λ/1000 [25]. Nevertheless the operation bandwidth in the latter PC structure was narrow.…”

Absorption effects on the Mie plasmon-polariton modes in two-dimensional plasmonic photonic crystals

“…In recent years, an increasing interest in the study of plasmonic photonic crystals (PCs) has been motivated by the potential applications in the design and development of plasmonic photonic-based platforms for the harnessing of light-plasmon interactions for sensing [1][2][3][4][5] and photovoltaic applications [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Plasmonic systems typically consist of metallic structures that support plasmon-polariton excitations.…”

Broadband Near-Unidirectional Absorption Enabled by Phonon-Polariton Resonances in SiC Micropyramid Arrays

“…The strategies underpinning these current absorption management efforts could be grouped into five general approaches. In particular, new superabsorber architectures that have been proposed may utilize plasmonic resonances that enhance the EM field in the vicinity of the absorber [1,2,13], involve photonic metamaterials [14,15] either as impedance matchers [5,16,17] or enhancers of dark EM field components by virtue of a characteristic hyperbolic photonic dispersion [18], employ lossy material bilayers with destructive Fabry-Perot interference suppressing reflection [9,19], tailor resonant coupling to waveguide/cavity modes in the absorber structure [4,12], or manipulate a near-reflectionless coupling to the near band-edge Floquet-Bloch mode of a lossy photonic crystal [20,21].…”