Design and model of wideband absorber made of ultrathin metamaterial structures

A planar microwave ultrathin broadband absorber is proposed. It is composed of metallic patterns arranged on a dielectric material which is backed by a copper plate. The patterns of different dimensions allow to judiciously design absorption peaks at specific frequencies of interest. These peaks are due to the mode resonances of the cavities formed by the metallic patches, the dielectric substrate and the copper plate. In order to widen the absorption bandwidth, patterns of different dimensions are used, together with the different modes of these cavities. Numerical and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed method at microwave frequencies. It is also shown that the use of a composite air dielectric substrate supporting the metallic patterns helps to increase the absorption level.