Design, characterization and fabrication of a flexible broadband metamaterial absorber based on textile

With the development of electronic technology, flexible materials with electromagnetic absorption functions have become a hot topic of research, especially their process from design to manufacturing. In this paper, a novel flexible broadband metamaterial absorber (MA) based on textile was proposed, which is composed of resistive film patterns, scuba knitting fabric and metallized fabric. Different from conventional flexible absorbers, this design has the advantages of high design freedom, excellent flexibility, simplicity, low-cost, and washable. We have systemically investigated the theory, simulation model and experimental prototyping of the proposed flexible absorber. Through absorption mechanism analysis based on electromagnetic field distribution and power loss density, it is shown that the loss of the absorber originates mainly from the ohmic loss of the resistive film. In addition, the proposed absorber is able to cover diverse wide frequency bands of X-band (8.2–12.4 GHz), Ku-band (12.4–18 GHz) or K-band (18–26.5 GHz) by simply adjusting the surface resistance (from 45 to 100 Ω/sq), substrate thickness (from 2.6 to 3 mm) and dielectric constant (from 1.5 to 2.1). As a demonstration, commercial PU conductive films were used to fabricate real-world prototypes through a simple “cut” and “paste” method. Excellent match between the measured and simulated results verifies our design and fabricated process. What's more, the proposed MA exhibits wide incident angle and bending stability. The proposed MA is a promising candidate for wideband absorbers, and its design, characterization and fabrication process provide new technical solutions for the design and development of electromagnetic wave absorbing materials.