Optics Communications 322 (2014) 209–213

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

Perfect absorber metamaterials: Peak, multi-peak

and broadband absorption
D.T. Viet a, N.T. Hien a, P.V. Tuong a, N.Q Minh a, P.T. Trang a, L.N. Le a, Y.P. Lee b, V.D. Lam a,n
a
Institute of Materials Science, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Hanoi, Viet Nam
b
Department of Physics, Quantum Photonic Science Research Center and RINs, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, South Korea

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We investigated the absorption in a sandwich model of absorber metamaterial (MM) which consists of
Received 23 November 2013 periodic metallic dishes at the front and metallic plane at the back, separated by dielectric substrate.
Received in revised form First, single perfect-absorption (PA) peaks were achieved by studying the influence of parameters in the
12 February 2014
unit cell of the MM. The electromagnetic properties were presented to understand the mechanism of the
Accepted 13 February 2014
PA at resonance frequency. In order to yield a multi-peak absorption, the dishes were designed in
Available online 26 February 2014
different sizes and appropriately arranged on the front side of MM. For the furthermost purpose of our
Keywords: work, customizing broadband absorption was performed by adjusting the dishes sizes. Utilizing the
Metamaterials symmetrical geometry of dishes, polarization-insensitivity of the broadband absorption was gained.
Perfect absorption
Finally, the influence of the angle of incidence wave on the broadband absorption was examined.
Multi-resonator
& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction parameters, the mechanism of PA peak can be explained. The

In last decade, artificial sub-wavelength materials, the so-called
metamaterials (MMs), whose unit cell is structured to show
unnatural electromagnetic (EM) properties potentially applicable
to advanced devices, have attained great interests in optics and
photonics researches [1–3]. The manipulation of effective para-
meters in effective media develops the diversification in applica-
tions of MMs. Among them, the perfect absorption (PA), which is
potentially used in plasmonic sensing [4,5], solar-energy capturing
[6], and camouflage, has become one of the significant issues for
MMs. The first perfect absorber has been demonstrated under the
concept of MMs at GHz regime by Landy et al. [7]. By modulating
the refraction and the impedance z (ω) of MM, a near unity
absorption peak can be realized at the resonant frequency. Up to
date, PA has been demonstrated in every technologically relevant
spectral ranges, from microwave [7,8], THz [4,5], NIR [9], to the near
optical [6]. For different applications, the MM absorbers (MAs) have
been achieved in narrow peak [4–7], multi-band peaks [10], and
broadband [6,8–11]. Basically, PA is gained when the MMs simulta-
neously satisfy conditions: environment impedance-matching
leads to EM wave propagating into the medium and high-loss
factors dissipate EM energy to heat. Based on the effective material
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ 84 948288776/84 4 37917951;
fax: þ84 4 38360705.
E-mail address: lamvd@ims.vast.ac.vn (V.D. Lam).
parameters are variables of frequency of exciting EM wave: effective
relative permittivity, εðωÞ ¼ ε0 ðωÞ þ ε″ðωÞ, and effective relative per-
meability, μðωÞ ¼ μ0 ðωÞ þμ″ðωÞ: By adjusting the components of unit
cells, the real and the imaginary parts of the effective parameters
could be controlled separately to satisfy the conditions of PA. The
multi-peak [12] and broadband [13] MAs have been observed by
two configurations, arranging appropriately unit cells of PA peak
[14,15] and using the multi-layer model of absorption [11]. It notices
that there are many interactions between plasmons in the config-
urations. Hence, it is a problem to combine broadband MAs with
high efficiency, since the sensitive PA conditions are easy to be
broken by these interactions. Therefore, the achievement of narrow
peak, multi-peak, and broadband absorption which deal with
different applications are still the significant issue in the MM
researches.
In our paper, a conventional MA was designed to operate in
GHz range of EM radiation. First, we examined the influence of
parameters on the absorption to understand the characteristics of
effective medium. A PA peak was achieved at the plasmonic
resonance frequency. Second, the EM properties of the PA peak
were investigated to clarify the light trap at the magnetic reso-
nance. Finally, a broadband absorption with high efficiency was
gained by arranging appropriately unit cells of the PA peak. The
broadband MA exhibited polarization-insensitive properties from
utilizing the symmetrical geometry of disks [16]. The influence of
the incident angle on broadband absorption was also examined to
assess the efficiency.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2014.02.037
0030-4018 & 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
210 D.T. Viet et al. / Optics Communications 322 (2014) 209–213

2. Results and discussion absorption is only calculated from the reflectance and expressed
through the S11(ω) parameter as A(ω)¼ 1  |S11(ω)|2.
The simulation was carried out by using a finite-integration- First, in order to characterize the absorption properties of the
technique package of CST Microwave Studio [17]. For a single peak designed MM, we examined the influence of parameters on the
of absorption, the conventional absorber design, sandwich model: absorption at the resonance. In Fig. 1(b), the radius R of dishes is
layer1–layer2–layer10 , was employed to investigate the absorp- changed from 1.5 to 6.0 mm to observe the alterations of absorp-
tions. The front layer that is arranged periodically by metallic tion. It presents that a PA (near 100%) is achieved at 13.80 GHz
dishes and the back one that is metallic plane are separated by a when radius R is 3.0 mm. In addition, the absorption is also
dielectric layer. The conductor is copper with an electric conduc- strongly dependent on the dielectric thickness t of substrate layer
tivity of 5.96  107 Sm  1. The dielectric is FR-4 with a relative and the lattice constant a, as shown in Fig. 1(c) and (e). The PA
dielectric constant of 4.0 and a loss-tangent of 0.025 that is proper peaks are yielded by adjusting these parameters. From Fig. 1(d),
with the fabrication on PCB substrate [15]. A unit cell of the MM we can see that conservation of the absorption with regard to the
was shown in Fig. 1(a). The geometrical parameters were set to be dielectric constant of the substrate layer. This shows that PA is
a ¼12, R ¼3, t ¼0.4 mm. The thickness of copper layer is 0.036 mm impossible to be maintained by controlling the dielectric constant.
[18]. The MM was designed to work in the range of 12–18 GHz. Noticeably, the failure of absorption conservation is not applied to
The EM wave is polarized in such a way that the electric and the quality of substrate layer. The dielectric loss PA MM as presented
magnetic fields are parallel with the MM slab, while the wave one that will be demonstrated in later discussion is strongly
vector k propagates normally to the front side of the MM (Fig. 1 influenced by loss-tangent of insulator layer [18–20]. Moreover,
(a)). The boundary conditions are set so that the unit cells are we showed that the dimensional parameters effect on the
periodic in the E–H plane. The environment in the simulations is impedance-matching condition, and hence strongly impact on
defined as free space which corresponds with the previous the absorption of the MM.
experimental method [19]. In the conventional absorber model, Next, we observed the dependences of the above parameters
the back layer is the EM-wave-prevented plane. Therefore, the on the resonance frequency. As we can see in Fig. 1(b)–(d), the

1.00
24
0.95

Frequency (GHz)
20
Absorption

Absorption
0.90
Resonance frequency 16

0.85
12

0.80 8

0.75 4
1 2 3 4 5 6
Radius (mm)

1.00
1.0 14.5
24
0.98
0.9 21
Frequency (GHz)
Frequency (GHz)

14.0 0.96
Absorption

0.8
Absorption

Absorption 18
0.94
0.7 13.5 Resonance frequency
15
0.92
0.6 Absorption 12
13.0 0.90
0.5 Resonance frequency
9
0.88
0.4 12.5 6
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Dielectric thickness (mm) Dielectric constant

1.0
1.00 15.0

0.8
0.95
Frequency (GHz)

Reflectance
Magnitude

14.5 Absorption
Absorption

0.6
0.90
Absorption Transmittance

0.85 Resonance frequency 0.4

14.0
0.80 0.2

0.75 13.5 0
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 12 13 14 15 16 17
Lattice constant (mm) Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 1. (a) Unit cell of MA. Dependence of absorption spectra and resonance frequency on the MM parameters: (b) radius of dishes, (c) thickness of dielectric substrate,
(d) dielectric constant of substrate, and (e) lattice constant. (f) Results of PA achievement.
 D.T. Viet et al. / Optics Communications 322 (2014) 209–213
absorption frequency is drastically decreased according to the
enhancements of radius R, dielectric thickness t, and dielectric
constantε, respectively. The results can be are elucidated by the
mechanism of the absorption peak as being discussed later, the
dielectric loss and the magnetic influence. The reconfigurations of
changing R, t, and ε vary the interplay between dishes and metallic
plane at the back. Meanwhile, the change of lattice constant is
insensitive to the resonance frequency, as shown in Fig. 1(e). Based
on the observation, it can be concluded that the coupling between
the dishes and metallic plane influences the resonance frequency
more dominantly than the interaction between the dishes. This is
expectation of the broadband MAs created by arranging the
different dishes on one-layer MM. These will be more clarified in
the later discussion of present work.
Consequence for the studies on parameters, which were shown
in the first paragraph, we resulted in a MA using the optimized
parameters. The spectra of absorption, reflectance, and transmit-
tance of the optimized MA are plotted in Fig. 1(f), which respond
to the designed parameters. The PA is observed at 13.80 GHz with
no transmission and reflection. The perfect and narrow peak
promises to be applied in devices such as thermal bolometers
[5], and wavelength selective radiators in the GHz regime. How-
ever, a PA peak is not very much significant to be available for EM
energy capturing [6] and combated camouflage applications [11].
For them, multi-peak and broadband absorptions which we
presented at the last of our work will be more applicable.
Fig. 2 shows of the interaction between effective MM and EM
wave and the equivalent model to clarify the mechanism of the
absorption peak. In Fig. 2(a), the anti-parallel of the induced
currents at the resonance frequency proves that the PA is formed
due to of the external magnetic field of incidence. The anti-parallel
movement of metallic plasmons is major reason controls the
operations of PA MM, impedance-matching to free space and heat
generation. It interprets the dominant role of the equivalent circuit
as shown in Fig. 2(b) or the concentration of the power losses on
the substrate layer as shown in Fig. 2(c). In other words, the
magnetic resonance induces a dielectric-loss MM absorber [7–19].
We now return to the shift of the resonance frequency according
to the parameters in Fig. 1 to explain the phenomena based on the
Fig. 2. (a) Distribution of induced current at resonance frequency in E–k plane. (b) Equivalent circuit of PA-structure. (c) Distribution of power losses at resonance frequency.
211
equivalent circuit (Fig. 2(b)) [21]. All of elements of the circuit are
change when radius R of dish is alternated that causes the rapid
red-shift in Fig. 1(b). Only capacitors Cin are alternated according to
dielectric thickness and dielectric constant, so the red-shift
responding enhancement of t and ε (Fig. 1(c) and (d), respectively)
is decreased in comparison with Fig. 1(b). For the illustration in
Fig. 1(e), we saw that only Cout is influenced when changing lattice
constant. Since Cout is the air capacitor, its influence in the
equivalent circuit is not much significant. Therefore, the resonance
frequency is conservative with enhancement of lattice constant a.
Through the above investigation of radius R and lattice constant
a, the broadband of high absorption using only one slab MM was
gained for the furthermost result of our work (Fig. 3). In order to
intrigue for a broadband absorber, we arranged the dishes with
different sizes at the front side of MM slab. The 4-peak spectrum of
absorption in Fig. 3(a) is responded by four dishes. The radius of
dishes, R1 ¼3, R2 ¼ 2.8, R3 ¼2.6, R4 ¼2.4 mm and lattice constant of
14 mm are excited for the peaks at 13.72, 14.74, 15.70, and
17.06 GHz, respectively. The result of induced magnetic energy at
resonance frequencies is shown in Fig. 3(b) to better understand
the physics of the suggested multi-band absorption MM.
In order to obtain a broadband absorption MM, we adjusted the
sizes of the dishes for the models with 4 and 9 dishes. Fig. 3
(c) plotted the spectra of broadband absorption MM for two
models: 4-peak broadband, R1 ¼2.5, R2 ¼ 2.67, R3 ¼2.75, and
R4 ¼2.6 mm and 9-peak broadband, R1 ¼ 2.5, R2 ¼ 2.55, R3 ¼2.6,
R4 ¼2.65, R5 ¼ 2.7, R6 ¼2.75, R7 ¼2.8, R8 ¼ 2.85, and R9 ¼2.9 mm,
a¼ 20 mm. For 4-dishe model, the bandwidth is gained to 1.3 GHz
with absorption better than 90%. The maximum of absorption is
about 99% at 15.3 GHz. For better one with nine dishes, the
bandwidth is about 1.8 GHz with absorption higher than 90%
and 2.1 GHz absorption better than 80%. The most intensive of
absorbance is nearly 100% at 15.2 GHz. By this way, the bandwidth
of high absorption can be expanded to be broader. Moreover,
utilizing the symmetrical geometry of dishes, presented broad-
band absorption exhibits polarization-insensitive properties under
normal incidence. Fig. 3(d) shows absorption spectrum according
to the angle of polarizationϕ. It present that the broadband
absorption is not much changed when enhancing ϕ from 01 to 901.
212 D.T. Viet et al. / Optics Communications 322 (2014) 209–213

1.0

0.8

Absorption
0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Frequency (GHz)

1.0 1.0
4 dishes φ =0
9 dishes φ = 15
0.8 0.8 φ = 30
φ = 45

Absorption
Absorption

0.6 0.6 φ = 60
φ = 75
0.4 0.4 φ = 90

0.2 0.2

0.0 0.0
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)

50 1
0.8
40 0.6
Incident Angle (Deg.)

0.4

30 0.2
0

20 Absorp.

10

0
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 3. (a) Multi-peak absorption. (b) Distribution of induced magnetic energy density in a unit cell at resonance frequencies. (c) Broadband absorption using 4 dishes and
9 dishes models. (d) Absorption spectra according to polarization angle of EM wave. (e) Absorption according to the incidence angle.

Finally, we studied on the effect of incidence angle on the
broadband absorption MM. Fig. 3(e) shows that the absorption of
the MM is insensitive with incidence angle from 01 to 151.
However, this result is not preserved when increasing incidence
angle from 151 to 501. The absorption spectrum is gradually
separated to be multi-peak one and the absorption is decreased.
Since the absorption results from magnetic coupling so the TE
mode which the magnetic field is changed reveals a failure with
incidence angle. Here, only TM mode exposed a quite significant
result.
was demonstrated by using the best choices of the parameters.
For the final purpose of our work, the multi-peak and the broad-
band of high absorption were achieved by manipulating the
resonators in only one layer of MM. The broadband absorption
MM exhibits a nearly the polarization-insensitive property. An
examination of incidence angle in TM mode exposed a quite
considerable result. Our work oriented methods for fabricating
the PA peaks achievement as same as multi-peak absorption MM
and broadband absorption MM which are potential to be applied
to sensor devices, EM energy, and camouflages in the near future.

3. Conclusions
We numerically designed, examined, and characterized the PA
at the GHz frequency of EM radiation. The parameters were
studied to understand the properties of the MM. The PA peak
Acknowledgments
This research is funded by project “Development of problem-
solving environments for computational science based on resource
 D.T. Viet et al. / Optics Communications 322 (2014) 209–213
sharing high-performance computers” at Vietnam Academy of
Science and Technology.
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