Polarization-selective dual-band infrared metamaterial perfect absorber

Abstract Metamaterial absorbers have significant effects and great potential for applications in a variety of important sciences and technologies, including infrared imaging, thermal emitters, electromagnetic shielding, and photodetectors. However, conventional absorbers with a single function are difficult to meet the growing demand of devices, especially for the situations where the absorption and polarization are simultaneously required in infrared detection. If the polarization absorption function is realized by integrating absorption and polarization elements, it will lead to a large overall system size and slow response time. To solve this problem, we propose a dual-band polarization-selective metamaterial perfect absorber, whose maximum absorptions at resonant wavelengths of λ 1 = 2.824 μ m and λ 2 = 7.622 μ m are 99.99% and 99.88%, respectively. The absorber exhibits strong polarization sensitivity, absorbing TM-polarized incident light and reflecting TE-polarized incident light at the two resonant wavelengths. The extinction ratios of the absorber at the two referred resonant wavelengths are 90.9 and 142.7, respectively. The proposed absorber would be beneficial for infrared polarization detection and imaging.