Dual broadband near-infrared perfect absorber based on a hybrid plasmonic-photonic microstructure

High performance light absorber with a broad bandwidth is particularly desirable for near-infrared photodetection and optical interconnects. Here we demonstrate a dual broadband perfect absorber in the near-infrared regime, which is based on a hybrid plasmonic-photonic microstructure. Such a microstructure is fabricated by self-assembling a monolayer colloidal crystal on an optically opaque metal film followed by depositing a thin metallic half-shell on the top of the colloidal particles. Both experimental and numerical simulation results show that the simply designed absorbers have dual broadband with absorption exceeding 90% in the near-infrared region with the absorption bands being scalable by tuning the size of the colloidal particles. Moreover, the absorption efficiency shows an extremely slight dispersion for the incident angles up to 50 degrees, benefit from the high symmetry as well as the highly modulated plasmonic microstructures that lead to a weak polarization dependence of these two absorption bands. The relative ease of growing high-quality colloidal crystals and the low cost of fabricating such plasmonic-photonic microstructures with high reproducibility could promise applicability of the light absorber in the field of photodetectors, thermal emitters and photovoltaics.