A broadband low-reflection metamaterial absorber

Artificially engineered metamaterials have enabled the creation of electromagnetic materials with properties not found in nature. Recent work has demonstrated the feasibility of developing high performance, narrowband electromagnetic absorbers using such metamaterials. These metamaterials derive their absorption properties primarily through dielectric loss and impedance matching at resonance. This paper builds on that work by increasing the bandwidth through embedding resistors into the metamaterial structure in order to lower the Q factor and by using multiple elements with different resonances. This is done while maintaining an impedance-matched material at normal incidence. We thus present the design, simulation, and experimental verification of a broadband gigahertz region metamaterial absorber, with a maximum absorption of 99.9% at 2.4 GHz, and a full width at half maximum bandwidth of 700 MHz, all while maintaining low reflection inside and outside of resonance. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.