High-impedance surfaces (HIS) comprising lossy frequency selective surfaces (FSS) are employed to design thin electromagnetic absorbers. The structure, despite its typical resonant behavior, is able to perform a very wideband absorption in a reduced thickness. Losses in the frequency selective surface are introduced by printing the periodic pattern through resistive inks and hence avoiding the typical soldering of a large number of lumped resistors. The effect of the surface resistance of the FSS and dielectric substrate characteristics on the input impedance of the absorber is discussed by means of a circuital model. It is shown that the optimum value of surface resistance is affected both by substrate parameters (thickness and permittivity) and by FSS element shape. The equivalent circuit model is then used to introduce the working principles of the narrowband and the wideband absorbing structure and to derive the best-suited element for wideband absorption.

Analysis and Design of Ultra Thin Electromagnetic Absorbers Comprising Resistively Loaded High Impedance Surfaces

High-Impedance Surfaces (HIS) comprising lossy Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS) are employed to design thin electromagnetic absorbers. The structure, despite its typical resonant behavior, is able to perform a very wideband absorption in a reduced thickness. Losses in the frequency selective surface are introduced by printing the periodic pattern through resistive inks and hence avoiding the typical soldering of a large number of lumped resistors. The effect of the surface resistance of the FSS and dielectric substrate characteristics on the input impedance of the absorber is discussed by means of a circuital model. It is shown that the optimum value of surface resistance is affected both by substrate parameters (thickness and permittivity) and by FSS element shape. The equivalent circuit model is then used to introduce the working principles of the narrowband and the wideband absorbing structure and to derive the best-suited element for wideband absorption. Finally, the experimental validation of the presented structures is presented.

Metasurfaces are artificially structured thin films with unusual properties on demand. Different from metamaterials, the metasurfaces change the electromagnetic waves mainly by exploiting the boundary conditions, rather than the constitutive pa-rameters in three dimensional (3D) spaces. Despite the intrinsic similarities in the operational principles, there is not a universal theory available for the understanding and design of metasurface-based devices. In this article, we propose the concept of metasurface waves (M-waves) and provide a general theory to describe the principles of them. Most importantly, it is shown that the M-waves share some fundamental properties such as extremely short wavelength, abrupt phase change and strong chromatic dispersion, which make them different from traditional bulk waves. It is shown that these properties can enable many important applications such as subwavelength imaging and lithography, planar optical devices, broadband anti-reflection, absorption and polarization conversion. Our results demonstrated unambiguously that traditional laws of diffraction, refraction, reflection and absorption should be revised by using the novel properties of M-waves. The theory provided here may pave the way for the design of new electromagnetic devices and further improvement of metasurfaces. The exotic properties of metasurfaces may also form the foundations for two new sub-disciplines called “subwavelength surface electromagnetics” and “subwavelength electromagnetics”.

Principles of electromagnetic waves in metasurfaces

This review aims to summarise the progress in some materials and structures for electromagnetic applications, such as microwave absorption, electric shielding and antenna designs, which have been developed in recent years. Composites with spherical powders for microwave absorption focus mainly on those based on ferrites (especially hexagonal), carbonyl iron and related alloys and various newly emerged nanosized materials. Composites with long conductive fibres as fillers will be summarised, with speical attentions to prediction, measurment and evaluation of their performances. Metamaterials include structures for microwave absorbing applications, tunable materials or structures with reflection or transmission coefficients that are tunable by external magnetic or electric fields, and specially designed structures for microwave absorbing applications, with thickness much smaller than that of conventional composite materials and performances that can be optimised by the physical properties of substra...

Recent progress in some composite materials and structures for specific electromagnetic applications

A detailed study of a single-layer circuit analog absorber using double-square-loop array reveals that three resonances can be obtained within its operating frequency band. An equivalent circuit model is proposed to explain how these three resonances can be produced and its absorption bandwidth can be widened. Simple guidelines for the design of this double-square-loop absorber are then formulated. It is shown through measurements that the fractional bandwidth of 126.8% is realized for at least 10 dB reflectivity reduction under the normal incidence. Furthermore, the total thickness of the proposed design is only 0.088λL at the lowest operating frequency. A good agreement between simulated and measured results demonstrates the validity of our design.

On the Design of Single-Layer Circuit Analog Absorber Using Double-Square-Loop Array

A simple, fast and efficient method for designing wideband radar absorbers is proposed. The idea is to modify the circuit analog absorber method without perturbing the bandwidth. This is done by utilizing the asymptotic behavior of such an absorber at low frequency and replacing the band-stop resonating frequency selective surfaces with low-pass capacitive ones, which can be synthesized by square patches. It is shown that higher frequencies are not influenced by these modifications. A thin wideband capacitive circuit absorber (CCA) is presented with 28% reduction of thickness and 57% increase of bandwidth in comparison to the Salisbury screen. It is also explained why some optimized metamaterial designs fail to compete with the CCA method. For high permittivity layers, it is shown that the CCA is a better solution than the Jaumann absorber and improvements both in thickness and bandwidth are possible. A three layered ultrawideband CCA is presented with total thickness of 15.1 mm.

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A.K. Zadeh

Papers

Capacitive Circuit Method for Fast and Efficient Design of Wideband Radar Absorbers