An ultra-wideband and wide-angle optically transparent flexible microwave metamaterial absorber

Abstract In this work, we propose an ultra-wideband and wide-angle optically transparent flexible metamaterial absorber (MMA), consisting of a multilayered structure with a transparent polyvinyl chloride layer and a periodic indium-tin-oxide patch array attached to a polyethylene terephthalate film layer. The absorptivity of the proposed MMA reaches above 90% from 5.61 to 29.17 GHz whether it is flat or even bent with 60º thanks to the flexibility of the materials. Excellent agreement between the measured and simulated results verify our design. The proposed MMA holds great promise in applications for flexible devices that require optical transparency, ultra-wideband and wide angle stealth.