Ultra-thin perfect absorber employing a tunable phase change material
Abstract
We show that perfect absorption can be achieved in a system comprising a single lossy dielectric layer of thickness much smaller than the incident wavelength on an opaque substrate by utilizing the nontrivial phase shifts at interfaces between lossy media. This design is implemented with an ultra-thin (∼λ/65) vanadium dioxide (VO2) layer on sapphire, temperature tuned in the vicinity of the VO2 insulator-to-metal phase transition, leading to 99.75% absorption at λ = 11.6 μm. The structural simplicity and large tuning range (from ∼80% to 0.25% in reflectivity) are promising for thermal emitters, modulators, and bolometers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Nov 26, 2012
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4767646
Entities
People
- D. N. Basov
- Deepika Sharma
- Federico Capasso
- Jiao Lin
- M. M. Qazilbash
- Mikhail A Kats
- Patrice Genevet
- Romain Blanchard
- Shriram Ramanathan
- Yang Zheng
Organizations
- College of William & Mary
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Harvard University
- Office of Naval Research
- Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology
- University of California, San Diego