Ultrabroadband strong light absorption based on thin multilayered metamaterials

Light absorbers have drawn intensive attention as crucial components for solar-energy harvesting, thermal emission tailoring, modulators, etc. However, achievement of light absorbers with wide bandwidth remains a challenge thus far. Here, a thin, unprecedentedly ultrabroadband strong light absorber is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which consists of periodic taper arrays constructed by an alumina-chrome multilayered metamaterial (MM) on a gold substrate. This MM can change from a hyperbolic material to an anisotropic dielectric material at different frequency ranges and the special material features are the fundamental origins of the ultrabroadband absorption. The absorber is quite insensitive to the incident angle, and can be insensitive to the polarization. One two-dimensional periodic array of 400-nm height MM tapers is fabricated. The measured absorption is over 90% over almost the entire solar spectrum, reaching an average level of 96%, and remains high (above 85%) even in the longer-wavelength range till 4 m. The proposed absorbers open up a new avenue to realize broadband thin light-harvesting structures.