A Conformal Ultrathin and Ultra-wideband Metamaterial-Based Absorber Dedicated for Applications in C and X Bands

The paper presents an extremely thin, ultra-wide band polarization-independent metasurface absorber for both kind of surfaces, i.e., flat and curved. The proposed unit cell is mounted on a copper-backed FR-4 substrate. The uppermost layer of structurer is composed of four identical top metallic ‘3-element yagi’-shaped resonators connected by four lumped resistors to maximize the absorptivity band. The innovative aspect of the proposed design is “close to unity” absorption coefficient in 4.1 GHz to 10.5 GHz frequency band with polarization insensitive behavior due to its novel symmetric structure. This conformal and ultrathin structure is flexible and can be used on curved structure. The simulation includes the investigation on normalized impedance, surface current density, field distributions, along with some parametric studies which show good absorption and polarization-independent behavior for broad angle of incident waves in the specified frequency bands. These studies make it a strong contender for applications in target stealth, microwave RCS reduction, and EM wave protection. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.