Ultra-broadband absorber based on cascaded nanodisk arrays

An ultra-broadband perfect absorber consisting of cascaded nanodisk arrays is demonstrated by placing insulator-metal-insulator-metal nanodisks on insulator-metal film stacks. The absorber shows over 90% absorption in a wavelength range between 600 nm and 4000 nm under transverse magnetic (TM) polarization, with an average absorptivity of 91.5% and a relative absorption bandwidth of 147.8%. The analysis of the electric field and magnetic field show that the synergy of localized surface plasmons, propagating surface plasmons, and plasmonic resonant cavity modes leads to the ultra-broadband perfect absorption, which accords well with the results of impedance-matched analysis. The influences of structural parameters and different metal materials on absorption performance are discussed. Furthermore, the absorber is polarization-independent, and the absorption remains more than 90% at a wide incident angle up to 40° under TE polarization and TM polarization. The designed ultra-broadband absorber has promising prospects in photoelectric detection and imaging.