A characterization study of highly-tailorable 3-D metamaterials in the thermal infrared for selective emission behaviors

摘要

The spectral behaviors of an externally-illuminated thermal infrared metamaterial were characterized through simulation and experimental measurement of the power transmittance and reflectance within the 6 - 20μm range. Finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulations in both 2-D and 3-D environments were swept over a multitude of bent dipole inclusion configurations at normal incidence angles to produce a model which exhibited a dominant electrical resonance in the long-wave infrared (IR) and increased in magnitude, bandwidth and wavelength as a function of the dipole length. Despite the appearance of fabrication defects in the measured samples, it was found the experimental data was in good agreement with the 3-D FDTD simulations, though not at all with the 2-D simulations. These introductory results indicate the dipole inclusion may behave in many ways similar to an antenna in the IR, enabling spectrally- and spatially-selective control of the emission pattern.