A wide-angle and polarization insensitive infrared broad band metamaterial absorber

In this paper, we present the design and experimental demonstration of a broad single-band metamaterial absorber composed of a simple two-dimensional periodic silver-SiO2-silver sandwich array. The experimental results show that a near-perfect absorption band with a bandwidth of approximately 0.4 mu m in the THz region is obtained, which is in reasonable agreement with the simulated results. The calculated electric field intensity distributions indicate that the broad absorption band is achieved by plasmonic hybridization of two plasmon resonances: one originates from outward coupling between adjacent unit cells and the other arises from inward coupling between the two sub-structures. The effects of the structural parameters and the SiO2 layer thickness on the broad absorption band are investigated experimentally. The effect of the angle of incidence on the broad absorption band is also investigated experimentally and the absorption band remains high at large angles of incidence (60 degrees), which thus provides more efficient absorption of obliquely incident beams. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.