Broadband metamaterial absorber using resistive layers

The electromagnetic (EM) properties of media, such as propagation, focusing and scattering, strongly rely on the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability of media. Recently, artificially-created metamaterials (MMs) composed of periodically-arranged unit cells with tailored electric permittivity and magnetic permeability have drawn wide interest due to their capability of adjusting the EM response. MM absorbers using the conventional sandwich structures usually have very high absorption at a certain frequency, and the absorption properties of MMs can be adjusted simply by changing the geometrical parameters of unit cell. In this work, we suggested an incident-angle-independent broadband perfect absorber based on resistive layers. We analyze the absorption mechanism based on the impedance matching with the free space and the distribution of surface currents at specific frequencies. From the simulation, the absorption was expected to be higher than 96% in 1.4-6.0 GHz. The corresponding experimental absorption was found to be higher than 96% in 1.4-4.0 GHz, and the absorption turned out to be slightly lower than 96% in 4.0-6.0 GHz owing to the irregularity in the thickness of resistive layers.