Experimental demonstration of the performance of flexible metamaterial absorber on planar and cylindrical surface

In this paper, an ultrathin polarization independent conformal metamaterial absorber for planar and cylindrical surface is presented. The proposed structure consists of a periodic array of truncated square patch element in the center with rectangular strips coupled to the edges. It is fabricated on low cost commercially available FR-4 substrate by photolithographic method and the performance of structure is studied for both planar and cylindrical surface configurations. The absorbing structure having a thickness of lambda/128, displays angular stability up to 40 degrees for TE polarization and 60 degrees for TM polarization in the planar configuration. In the cylindrical configuration, the performance depends on the radius of curvature, since different elements are illuminated at different angles. This aspect is also studied and reported with experimental results.