Strong absorption of solar energy by using wide band metamaterial absorber designed with plus-shaped resonators

Abstract

A new metamaterial absorber (MA) having distinct properties than those given in the literature is investigated. Although several designs have been studied for achieving absorption characteristics in single-band, dual-band and multiple bands within the whole spectrum of solar light, there has been limited number of researches examining the broad-band MA in the visible light section of the spectrum. The designed structure is composed of the combination of three layers having different thicknesses including a metallic substrate, dielectric and a metal layer. Due to the sandwich-like structure, it can support the plasmonic resonance. The proposed structure, which provides a maximum absorption level of 99.42% at 579.26 THz, has a high absorption rate of 99% between the frequency band 545 and 628 THz. Numerical results indicate that the proposed structure has perfect absorption which is greater than 90.98% through the whole working frequency band. The dependency of the designed structure on the polarization angle is investigated for different incident angles with TE and TM polarizations as well as the TEM mode. In addition to its potential applications such as solar cells and cloaking, the designed structure can also be considered as a color sensor and an optical frequency sensor.