Design of metamaterial perfect absorbers in the long-wave infrared region

We designed a narrow-band metamaterial absorber (NMA) and an ultra-broadband metamaterial perfect absorber (UMPA) based on the impedance matching theory. The narrow-band metamaterial absorber mainly consists of Si3N4 cylinders with Si3N4 and Ti substrates. Numerical analysis shows that the absorption peak of the NMA is about 99.9% and the absorption bandwidth with more than 90% absorption is about 4.8 μm (9.5–14.3 μm). To further extend the absorption bandwidth, an ultra-broadband absorber was designed by integrating a Ti hyperbolic rectangle into the Si3N4 cylinder of the NMA. Numerical analysis shows that the absorption bandwidth of the UMPA is up to 10 μm (7–17 μm) with an average absorption rate of 96.6%. The designed UMPA has polarization insensitive properties with wide-angle absorption characteristics, and the average absorption can reach 85% and 76% in transverse magnetic (TM) and transverse electric (TE) modes, respectively, at 60° oblique incidence. The high absorption and wide band are mainly dominated by localized surface plasmon resonance, Fabry–Perot resonance and inter-resonance interactions. The designed absorber achieves excellent absorption in the long infrared wavelength band, which has potential applications in energy absorption, infrared sensing and other fields.