Stretchable IR metamaterial with ultra-narrowband perfect absorption

Abstract

The integration of a high-performance metamaterial (MM) onto mechanically flexible and deformable substrates offers significant promise in flexible electronics. Here, we propose two types of stretchable infrared (IR) MMs to design a tunable perfect absorber with a ring-shape (PA-RS) and a cross-shape (PA-CS) on a PDMS/Au/PDMS substrate, respectively. By stretching devices along different directions, PA-RS and PA-CS exhibit ultra-narrowband, polarization-dependent/independent, and switchable characterizations in the IR wavelength range. The tuning ranges are 2.37 μm and 2.36 μm for PA-RS and PA-CS with the deformation quantity of 2.50 μm along two-dimensional directions, respectively, without extra power supply. In this deformation range, most of the incident light is perfectly absorbed for PA-RS design operated at a wavelength of 4.31 μm and PA-CS design operated at a wavelength of 4.24 μm. The corresponding Q-factors of two devices are 98 and 118 for PA-RS and PA-CS, respectively. Such results are very suitable for high-performance refractive index sensor applications. Furthermore, two devices exhibit the functionalities of s-polarization switches and s-/p-polarization switches. To further investigate the characterizations of devices deformed by a tensile force, PA-CS could be actively tuned by bending devices at a certain angle. In the future, these proposed stretchable IR MMs could potentially possess high portability, applicability, and cost-effectiveness for wearable electronic devices in a variety of sensor fields.

Tunable Infrared Metamaterial Emitter for Gas Sensing Application

“…The permittivity and permeability of metamaterials can be tailored by properly engineering the geometrical dimensions and material compositions of their subwavelength periodic patterns. They are widely studied to realize thermal emitters and are perfect absorbers for energy harvesting, medical imaging, and high-sensitivity sensing applications [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. By tailoring the geometrical dimensions, metamaterials can be designed to span broad operating wavelengths, including visible [31][32][33], IR [34][35][36][37][38][39], terahertz [40][41][42][43][44], and microwave light [45,46].…”

Tunable Perfect Meta‐Absorber with High‐Sensitive Polarization Characteristic

“…[ 1–7 ] Many research efforts have been devoted to develop the high‐performance absorber with perfect absorption, [ 8 ] multi‐band absorption, [ 9,10 ] broadband absorption, [ 11 ] polarization‐independent absorption, [ 12 ] and omnidirectional incidence [ 13 ] spanned the entire spectrum. [ 14–17 ] To date, many tuning mechanisms are presented for tunable electromagnetic absorbers using coherent absorption, [ 18 ] semiconductor, [ 19 ] surface plasmon polariton, [ 20 ] and metamaterial. [ 2 ] Among them, metamaterial is an artificial structure composed of subwavelength unit cell, which exhibits extraordinary electromagnetic properties, such as negative refraction index, electromagnetic cloaking, perfect lensing, and perfect absorption.…”

Polarization-Sensitive Metamaterials with Tunable Multi-Resonance in the Terahertz Frequency Range

“…The classical design of a metamaterial is the configuration of a split-ring resonator (SRR). There has been much research presenting and demonstrating the use of diversified SRR designs [8][9][10][11][12][13], either symmetrically or asymmetrically, such as cross-shaped SRR [9], V-shaped SRR [10,11], spiral-shaped SRR [12], and multiple SRRs [13]. In view of these extraordinary optical properties of SRR-based metamaterials, there have been extensive studies reported in the different frequency ranges, from microwave, terahertz (THz), and infrared to visible spectra [14][15][16][17][18][19].…”