Infrared metamaterial absorber by using chalcogenide glass material with a cyclic ring-disk structure

We propose a novel infrared (IR) metamaterial absorber by using chalcogenide glass (ChG) material. The merits of ChG are zero extinction coefficient, excellent IR transparency, high third-order nonlinearity, adjustable refraction index, dispersion, and energy bandgap in the IR wavelength range. Therefore, it is very suitable for metamaterial designs used in widespread applications, such as solar cells, environmental sensors, wearable electronic devices, optoelectronics, and so on. This ChG-based metamaterial absorber is configured with a cyclic ring-disk (CRD) structure. By tailoring the geometrical structures of CRD, the corresponding resonant wavelength and intensity of the reflection spectra could be attenuated and modified. The maximum quality factor (Q-factor) is 625. These unique characteristics of this IR metamaterial absorber with a CRD structure can be used as a tunable IR filter, variable optical attenuator (VOA), and multi-resonance switch. For the applicability of the proposed IR metamaterial absorber, the proposed device is surrounded with different environmental media. The electromagnetic responses indicate that the proposed IR metamaterial absorber can be a high-efficiency environmental sensor with a correlation coefficient of 0.99999.