Numerical study of mid-infrared broadband perfect absorber based on dielectric/aluminium doped zinc oxide multilayer films

We propose a lithography-free wide-angle polarization-insensitive ultra-broadband absorber by using multilayer films consist of five pairs of aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO) and a dielectric film which is supposed to be fabricated on glass substrate. The absorption spectrum of the proposed model is calculated by using transfer matrix method. The analytic results show that the absorptivity is larger than 95% with normal incidence light in the wavelength range from 7.5 mu m to 20 mu m and having high transmittance at the visible wavelength range from 0.4 mu m to 0.8 mu m range. Further, the effect of incident angle and polarization on the absorption spectrum are also investigated. The absorption spectrum of the proposed design is highly tunable on changing the damping constant of the AZO film. The electric field and magnetic distributions at different wavelengths show that the absorption is mainly originated due to the constructive interference of electromagnetic waves in the multilayer films. Such physical mechanism of broadening bandwidth based on increasing the carrier concentration of the highly visible transparent conducting films have pave a new direction for the design of tunable broadband absorber in different frequency band. Meanwhile, this broadband absorber is a good candidate for the potential applications in daytime radiation cooling system in the mid-infrared frequency band and also used as transparent conducting electrode in solar cell applications.