Infrared absorber based on sandwiched two-dimensional black phosphorus metamaterials

As a direct band gap two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor material, black phosphorus (BP) bridges the characteristics of graphene, with a zero or near-zero band gap, and transition metal dichalcogenides, with a wide band gap. In the infrared (IR) regime, 2D BP materials can harvest electromagnetic energy due to losses derived from its surface conductivity. In this paper, we propose an IR absorber design comprising 2D BP metamaterials sandwiched between dielectric layers. The multilayered sandwich-like absorber structure is mounted on a full reflective gold mirror, which forms a Fabry-Perot resonator to strengthen light-matter interactions. Harvested surface plasmons are excited around the 2D BP metamaterial edges, and the incident IR light can be efficiently dissipated by increasing the number of layers of the sandwich-like structure (NLSS). The physical absorption mechanism can be attributed to the destructive interference from the metamaterials, which can be enhanced with increasing NLSS. Here, a phase difference of about 180 degrees is obtained between the directly reflected wave from the first interface and the emergent wave derived from the superposition of the multiple reflections among the resonator, and the amplitude of the emergent wave is steadily reduced to a value close to that of the directly reflected wave with increasing NLSS for incident transverse-magnetic polarized IR illumination. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America