Control of reflectance and transmittance in scattering and curvilinear hyperbolic metamaterials

We demonstrate reduced reflectance in curvilinear lamellar hyperbolic metamaterials as well as planar hyperbolic metamaterials consisting of metal/dielectric multilayers, with scatterers deposited on the top. The reduced reflectance is accompanied by a significant enhancement in transmission along with non-reciprocity of transmittance in forward and backward propagating directions. The observed experimental behavior is qualitatively similar to the results of numerical solutions of Maxwell equations. The findings of this study pave the way to a variety of important applications, including broadband enhancement of light trapping in photovoltaic devices. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4746387]