High-performance and cost-effective absorber for visible and near-infrared spectrum based on a spherical multilayered dielectric-metal structure.

A broadband, polarization-insensitive, wide-angle absorber based on a spherical multilayered dielectric-metal structure is numerically designed and experimentally demonstrated in this paper. This absorber has average absorbance of 0.98 between 380 and 1910 nm, indicating a spectral width of 1530 nm with absorbance exceeding 0.9, and covering the entire visible and near-infrared spectrum. The physical mechanism leading to this broadband absorption is discussed along with the effect of structural parameters on the absorber performance. Importantly, the absorbance is hardly affected by incident angle below 45° and it still stays at a high level with incident angle up to 60°, for both transverse magnetic and transverse electric plane waves.