Broadband, wide-incident-angle, and polarization-insensitive high-efficiency absorption of monolayer graphene with nearly 100% modulation depth at communication wavelength

Abstract

We theoretically study how to greatly improve the near-infrared light absorption of monolayer graphene through the excitation of magnetic resonance in metamaterials. The absorption maximum of monolayer graphene is able to reach up to about 77% at the communication wavelength of 1550 nm. The conventionally defined absorption bandwidth, i.e., the full width at half maximum (FWHM), is nearly 160 nm. Thanks to the localization nature of magnetic resonance, the broadband high-efficiency absorption of monolayer graphene is insensitive to the incident angle and the light polarization. The absorption maximum, the absorption bandwidth, and the resonance position all have almost no change, when the incident angle is increased to even 60 degrees for both p and s polarizations. By applying an external bias voltage to change Fermi energy, the absorption in graphene can be completely modulated, with a nearly 100% modulation depth. Furthermore, the graphene absorption has an abrupt and large change around the interband transition, which exhibits an electrical switching property. Our work may find potential applications in graphene-based optoelectronic devices such as photodetector and modulator.