Effect of Unit Cell Shape on Switchable Infrared Metamaterial VO2 Absorbers/Emitters

Metamaterial absorber/emitter is an important aspect of infrared radiation manipulation. In this paper, we proposed four simple switchable infrared metamaterial absorbers/emitters with Ag/VO2 disks on the Ag plane employing triangle, square, hexagon, and circle unit cells. The spectral absorption peaks whose intensities are above 0.99 occur at similar to 4 mu m after structure optimization when VO2 is in insulating state and disappear when VO2 becomes metallic state. The simulated electromagnetic field reveals that the spectral absorption peaks are attributed to the excitation of magnetic polariton within the insulating VO2 spacer layer, whose values exceed 1.59 orders of magnitude higher than the incident magnetic field. Longer resonant wavelength would be excited in square arrays because its configuration is a better carrier of charges at the same spans. For absorption stability, the absorbers/emitters with square and circular structures do not have any change with the polarization angles changing from 0 degrees to 90 degrees, due to the high rotational symmetric structure. And four absorbers/emitters reveal similar shifts and attenuations under different incident angles. We believed that the switchable absorber/emitter demonstrates promising applications in the sensing technology and adaptive infrared system.

Automated summary

In this study, four switchable infrared metamaterial absorbers/emitters were proposed using Ag/VO2 disks on the Ag plane with different unit cells. The absorption peaks occurred at around 4 μm after optimization of the structure when VO2 is in insulating state, and disappeared when it became metallic state. The absorbers/emitters show stable performance under different incident angles due to their high rotational symmetric structure, indicating promising applications in sensing technology and adaptive infrared systems.