Engineering optical properties of semiconductor metafilm superabsorbers

Light absorption in ultrathin layer of semiconductor has been considerable interests for many years due to its potential applications in various optical devices. In particular, there have been great efforts to engineer the optical properties of the film for the control of absorption spectrums. Whereas the isotropic thin films have intrinsic optical properties that are fixed by materials' properties, metafilm that are composed by deep subwavelength nano-building blocks provides significant flexibilities in controlling the optical properties of the designed effective layers. Here, we present the ultrathin semiconductor metafilm absorbers by arranging germanium (Ge) nanobeams in deep subwavelength scale. Resonant properties of high index semiconductor nanobeams play a key role in designing effective optical properties of the film. We demonstrate this in theory and experimental measurements to build a designing rule of efficient, controllable metafilm absorbers. The proposed strategy of engineering optical properties could open up wide range of applications from ultrathin photodetection and solar energy harvesting to the diverse flexible optoelectronics.