Dual-band terahertz metamaterial absorber with very sensitive sensing ability in terms of the surrounding index is demonstrated.

A triple-band electromagnetically induced transparency effect using two sub-resonators having the mechanism of two big-bright modes coupling is experimentally demonstrated, and the applications in sensing and slow light are also given.

A composite gradient-index metasurface (C-GM) array for microwave power reception (MPR) operating at 5.8 GHz center frequency was introduced. The array is insensitive to the polarization of incident plane waves and possesses cosine gradient modulation characteristics, which can convert the incident plane waves into surface waves focused at the center of the array. The focused surface wave energy is then collected by an omnidirectional antenna and fed back to a single rectifier for radio frequency (RF) to direct current (DC) conversion, resulting in DC output. Simulation results show that the array can fully excite surface waves under different polarized plane wave excitations, and the omnidirectional antenna has good matching characteristics with the array, achieving an energy collection efficiency of 66.52%. The array was fabricated and measured, achieving an energy reception efficiency of 59.91% and an RF-DC conversion efficiency of 34.83%, which is consistent with the simulation results. The proposed C-GM array can capture higher electromagnetic power by simply increasing its size, without the need for additional rectifiers or complex matching networks, making it a flexible and efficient MPR solution for different application scenarios.

For a general metamaterial absorber, single patterned structure has only one resonance absorption peak. Therefore, a multi-band perfect absorber can be obtained by employing multiple different-sized metallic patterns. However, this kind of design strategy removes the novelty of their resonance mechanism and is also quite troublesome in regard to fabrication. Here, a novel and simple design of a triple-band terahertz absorber formed by only an asymmetric cross is presented. Theoretical results show that the proposed structure has three distinct absorption bands whose peaks are all over 99%. The first two absorption peaks are due to the magnetic resonances of the different sections of the asymmetric cross, and the third peak is based on the surface response of the structure. Moreover, sensing performance of the absorber is investigated in terms of the surrounding index. It is found that the figure of merit and quality factor of the third peak is much larger than those of the first two peaks, which reveals the proposed absorber’s, in particular the third resonance mode of the metamaterial, potential applications in sensing and detection.