Ultranarrow-band metagrating absorbers for sensing and modulation.

Nanostructured plasmonic metamaterials are an excellent platform for narrowband optical absorption, which has wide applications in sensing, filtering, modulation, and emission tailoring. However, achieving a subnanometer absorption bandwidth for optical sensing and dynamical control of light is still challenging. Here, we propose an asymmetric metagrating structure and make use of the propagating surface plasmonic mode that has a small dissipation rate, to achieve perfect optical absorption with a bandwidth of 0.28 nm near the wavelength of 1.55 μm. Our proposed structure can be used in solution environments as a chemical or biological sensor in the visible spectral range just by changing the structural parameters. The sensor possesses a sensitivity of 440 nm/RIU and figure of merit of 1333.33 RIU. In addition, by combining an organic electro-optic material with this metagrating, our device can be reconfigurable with a dynamic range of 15.52 dB. Therefore, our proposed metagrating platform not only works as an ultranarrow-band absorber, but also can be employed for optical sensing and dynamic control of light.