Thermal tracing of a highly reconfigurable and wideband infrared heat sensor based on vanadium dioxide

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of a highly reconfigurable and broadband perfect metamaterial absorber in the near-infrared region. Our model is a periodic nanostructure composed of an array of L-shaped hybrid gold and vanadium dioxide nanostructures on gold and glass substrates. The reconfigurability of the nanostructure is based on the metal–insulator transition of vanadium dioxide. The degree of reconfigurability depends on the temperature of the vanadium dioxide nanostructure. In order to study the photo-thermal effect on the reconfigurability of the nanostructure, we irradiate it with a time-dependent Gaussian pulse laser with a 1.5 ns pulse width. Our main purpose is twofold. On the one hand, we aim to investigate how the laser increases the temperature of the nanostructure, and on the other hand, we intend to explore whether the temperature modifies the absorption and reflection of the array. Our results reveal that the VO2 fully transitions to its metallic phase when the fluence of the incident laser is adjusted to 17.8 mJ/cm2.