Tunable polarization-independent and angle-insensitive ultra-broadband terahertz absorber with vanadium dioxide

Abstract In this paper, a tunable ultra-broadband terahertz metamaterial absorber is proposed based on the phase transition material of vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ). The absorber cell consists of a petal-like monolayer vanadium dioxide, a dielectric layer, and a metal layer. The terahertz absorption bandwidth of more than 90% absorptance reaches 4.2 THz, which covers from 1.99 to 6.19 THz, and a relative bandwidth attains to 102.7%. By changing the conductivity of VO 2 , the absorbance of this structure can be dynamically adjusted from 2.4% to 98.96%. The physical mechanism of the perfect absorption in this paper is investigated by the impedance matching theory and electric field distributions. The results show that the strong coupling effect in the petal-like structure contributes to the broadening of the absorption spectrum, and the absorber is polarization-insensitive and wide-angle incidence-insensitive due to the symmetry of the cell structure. The metamaterial absorber designed in this paper is expected to have a wide range of applications in the fields of terahertz imaging, stealth, sensing and detection.