Controlling polarization-dependent optical absorption of graphene through its thickness

Graphene, a promising material with unique electric and photonic properties, has been reported to show polarization-dependent optical absorption in the visible spectral range. Here, we study further on it and demonstrate that this polarization-dependent optical absorption is highly related with the thickness of graphene, i.e., the number of graphene layers. Numerical simulation result shows the extinction ratio of the three-layer graphene polarizer, which is switchable to be s-polarized pass or p-polarized pass, is remarkably high, indicating a great potential in many applications such as broadband polarizer and optical sensor.