Design and fabrication of a single metal layer tunable metamaterial absorber in THz range

•Absorption peak is changed with structural parameters.•Absorption peak is tunable with the measured temperature.•Original absorption performance is maintained. The design and development of resonance-tunable and high-absorptivity metamaterial absorbers is a research hotspot. In this paper, a single-band tunable metamaterial absorber based on the strontium titanate (STO) layer is designed and measured. This absorption peak is enhanced from 90% (D=3.2μm) to 99.4% (D=4.2μm) and the resonant frequency point is shifted from 6.2 THz to 5.8 THz, while it is enhanced and shifted to lower frequencies with the structural parameter P reducing. Measured results show that this absorption peak shows only a 2% reduction when the measured temperature is increased from 300 K to 380 K. Synchronous, the resonant frequency point is shifted from 6.2 THz to 7.1 THz. Based on the temperature-dependence of the STO layer, a temperature tunable metamaterial absorber is experimentally verified.