Tunable mid-infrared coherent perfect absorption in a graphene meta-surface

Abstract

Graphene has drawn considerable attention due to its intriguing properties in photonics and optoelectronics. However, its interaction with light is normally rather weak. Meta-surfaces, artificial structures with single planar function-layers, have demonstrated exotic performances in boosting light-matter interactions, e.g., for absorption enhancement. Graphene based high efficiency absorber is desirable for its potential applications in optical detections and signal modulations. Here we exploit graphene nanoribbons based meta-surface to realize coherent perfect absorption (CPA) in the mid-infrared regime. It was shown that quasi-CPA frequencies, at which CPA can be demonstrated with proper phase modulations, exist for the grapheme meta-surface with strong resonant behaviors. The CPA can be tuned substantially by merging the geometric design of the meta-surface and the electrical tunability of graphene. Furthermore, we found that the graphene nanoribbon meta-surface based CPA is realizable with experimentally achievable graphene sample.