Ultra-narrowband perfect absorption of monolayer two-dimensional materials enabled by all-dielectric subwavelength gratings

Abstract

Monolayer two-dimensional materials (2DMs) have excellent optical and electrical properties and show great application potential in photodetectors. However, the thickness at the atomic scale leads to weak light absorption, which greatly limits the responsivity of corresponding photodetectors. Here we propose an all-dielectric sub-wavelength zero-contrast grating structure that enables a monolayer of MoS2 with ultra-narrow bandwidth perfect light absorption. The absorption enhancement can be attributed to the critical coupling of guided mode resonances from two specific order diffractions in the structure, as confirmed by the planar waveguide theory and coupled mode theory. Such absorption enhancement can be generalized to any other absorptive atomically thin films, and the wavelength of perfect absorption can be tuned by scaling the dimension of the photonic structure. Our results offer a promising photonic approach to realize ultra-highly sensitive narrow-band photodetectors by using atomically thin materials.