In a thermal emitter context a metasurface geometry fulfils advanced functions of free-space impedance matching as well as spatial and temporal electromagnetic energy concentration and confinement, however, thermal energy is both sourced from or absorbed by the vibrational degrees of freedom inherent to molecular structures of the constituent materials themselves. At a basic level molecular vibrations in a polymer film can be harnessed as an emitter, provided its thickness is sufficiently high . For instance, a 300-µm-thick polyimide film can exhibit near 100% absorption and radiation emission. However, the thermal conductivity of a thick isotropic polymer film is low, which hampers rapid energy dissipation required for acceptable absorber/emitter performance. An alternative strategy utilizes plasmonic mode enhancement for attaining high photo-thermal absorbance and emission in lower thickness molecular films. Hence, in pursuit of exceedingly narrowband thermal energy radiation emitters, it can be expected that best results are attainable when narrowband metamaterial electromagnetic transducers are coupled to similarly narrowband material absorbers. In particular, the thermal radiation from molecular vibrational modes would have a suitably narrow spectral footprint to enable the targeted detection of analogous molecular vibrational signatures in a sensing device. Furthermore, thermal radiation extracted from molecular vibrations was explored as an approach for large-scale heat transfer between buildings and the surrounding atmosphere. For these types of applications thermal radiation out-coupling efficiency becomes the primary driver towards practical implementation. However, narrow-band MIR absorbers and emitters with suitably high spectral finesse and radiation out-coupling efficiency are yet to be experimentally demonstrated.