Enhanced Broadband Plasmonic Absorbers with Tunable Light Management on Flexible Tapered Metasurface

The growing attention in solar energy has motivated the development of highly efficient solar absorbers, and a metasurface absorber with broadband optical absorption is one of the main research interests. In this study, we developed an efficient metasurface absorber on a flexible film with a simple fabrication process. It consists of a polyimide nanocone substrate coated with gold and tungsten layers, exhibiting over 96% optical absorption in the visible range and a tunable absorption performance in the long wave range. From the analysis of experiment and simulation, the enhanced optical absorption is attributed to the synergistic effects of localized nanoparticle plasmon resonance and cavity plasmon resonance, and tunable light management comes from the strong infrared reflection of a gold layer and intrinsic absorption of variable tungsten layers. Meanwhile, the polarization-independent and omnidirectional optical absorption properties are demonstrated in the fabricated absorbers. Furthermore, this absorber shows the robustness against bending, maintaining the stable and excellent absorption performance after hundreds of bending tests. Our work offers a low-cost and straightforward tactic to design and fabricate flexible solar absorbers, and this metasurface absorber is a promising candidate for many exciting applications, such as emissivity control and flexible energy-related devices.