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Polarization-independent wide-angle triple-band metamaterial absorber

Article in Optics Express · May 2011

DOI: 10.1364/OE.19.009401 · Source: PubMed

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Polarization-independent wide-angle triple-band
metamaterial absorber
Xiaopeng Shen,1,2 Tie Jun Cui,1,* Junming Zhao,3 Hui Feng Ma,1
Wei Xiang Jiang,1 and Hui Li1
1
State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
2
Department of Physics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
3
Department of Electronic Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China
*tjcui@[Link]

Abstract: We report the design, fabrication, and measurement of a

microwave triple-band absorber. The compact single unit cell consists of
three nested electric closed-ring resonators and a metallic ground plane
separated by a dielectric layer. Simulation and experimental results show
that the absorber has three distinctive absorption peaks at frequencies
4.06GHz, 6.73GHz, and 9.22GHz with the absorption rates of 0.99, 0.93,
and 0.95, respectively. The absorber is valid to a wide range of incident
angles for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM)
polarizations. The triple-band absorber is a promising candidate as
absorbing elements in scientific and technical applications because of its
multiband absorption, polarization insensitivity, and wide-angle response.
©2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (160.3918) Metamaterials; (260.5740) Resonance; (050.6624) Subwavelength
structure.

References and links

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#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
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1. Introduction
The near perfect absorption component is one of the fundamental building blocks for a
microbolometer, a photodetector, hyper-spectral imaging, or as a coating material to minimize
reflections from objects [1–6]. Metamaterial (MM)-based absorbers may have promising
potential in these areas because of their high performance to absorb almost all incident
radiations [7,8]. The MM absorbers are made by patterning periodic electric resonators in a
single layer to perform electric resonance, spaced by a dielectric substrate with another MM
layer or metal plane. The coupling between the two layers leads to the magnetic resonance. By
properly tailoring the top electric resonator, the spaced dielectric substrate and the bottom
layer, an MM absorber can be impedance matching to free space, minimizing reflection and
transmission simultaneously, and all the incident power is consumed inside [7]. Since the first
MM absorber with near unity absorptivity was proposed, the design, fabrication, and
characterization of MM absorbers have attracted considerable interest. There have been
several demonstrating MM absorbers performed at microwave, terahertz, and infrared
frequencies [1–14]. Although with high absorptivity, most of the existing MM absorbers are
single-band, polarization-sensitive, and narrow accepted angles, which limits their potential
applications to spectroscopic detection and phase imaging. Multiband, polarization-insensitive
and wide-angle absorbers are urgently desired. Recently, the dual-band MM absorber has
been reported by Tao et al. and Wen et al., which shows two distinct absorption peaks using a
hybrid unit structure [11,12]. Owing to asymmetry geometry, they are dependent on the
polarization of an incident wave. Here we report the triple-band MM absorber using three
nested closed-ring resonators (CRRs) to form a compact single particle. The absorber exhibits
dipolar response at three frequencies with near perfect absorption for both TE and TM
polarizations. Moreover, the thickness of the proposed design is merely 2.4% of the shortest
working wavelength. The presented design has several important advantages, such as having
polarization insensitivity, having a wide angle with more than 0.9 absorption rate as the
incident angle is up to 50°, being super thin, and having a compact design. These features
make it a good candidate for potential applications.
2. Triple-band absorber design
The absorber’s efficiency is characterized as A()  1  R()  T () , where A() is the
absorptivity and R() and T () are the reflectivity and transmissivity as functions of
frequency  , respectively. Clearly, the higher performance of an absorber is equivalent to
minimize the R() and T () simultaneously. It’s convenient and efficient to use metal film
as ground plane to minimize T ()  0 . Impedance matching to free space is a crucial step to
ensure the incident power couple to the absorber with lower reflection. To design a multiband
perfect MM absorber, the parameters of unit cell must be carefully optimized to make sure the
impedance to free space is approximately one at every absorption frequency.
Figure 1(a) shows schematically the unit cell of the triple-band absorber as well as the
propagation configurations of the incident electromagnetic (EM) wave. The MM absorber
consists of three layers. The top layer consists of an array of three nested copper CRRs, which
is primarily responsible for the electric response to the incident field. The bottom layer is a
copper plane, which is used to zero the transmission and is responsible for the magnetic
response, exciting antiparallel surface current to that of the top layer.
We performed computer optimization and simulation of the MM absorber using the
commercial program CST Microwave StudioTM 2009. Periodic boundary conditions are set in
the x and y directions, and an open boundary is defined in the z direction for the

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9402
electromagnetic wave incidence and transmission. A loss-metal model is utilized for copper,
the electric conductivity of which is  Cu  5.8  107 s/m. The dielectric layer is simulated with

Fig. 1. Schematic structure of the microwave absorber. (a) The front and (b) side view of the
unit cell. (c) Photograph of the triple band absorber.

electric permittivity   4 and loss tangent tan( )  0.02 . The boundary conditions are set as
perfect electric conductor (PEC) and perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) on two pair faces to
approximate the normal incident TEM wave propagating the planar CRRs array. The
transmission and reflection are obtained from two waveguide ports placed in front and back of
the simulated unit cell, R( ) | S11 |2 , and T ( ) | S21 |2  0 due to the metal ground plane; then
the absorptivity is calculated as A( )  1  R( )  T ( )  1 | S11 |2 . The optimized MM absorber
had the dimensions, in millimeters, of L1 = 9.6, L2 = 7.3, L3 = 5.5, a = 10, w = 0.5, t1 = 0.018,
and t2 = 0.78.
Figure 2 shows the simulated absorptivity (black) as well as those of outer, middle, and
inner rings alone. There are three absorption peaks at frequencies 4.02GHz, 6.75GHz, and
9.24GHz with absorptivity 0.99, 0.96, and 0.98, respectively. The full width at half-maximum
(FWHM) of each absorption peak is 0.16GHz, 0.23GHz, and 0.33GHz, respectively, which
showing a tendency that the higher the frequency is, the wider the FWHM will be. We also
simulated the absorptivity of each single CRR with the same parameters of the triple-band
absorber, as shown in Fig. 2. The red, blue, and green curves represent the absorptivity of the
solely outer, middle, and inner CRR, respectively. Every CRR is responsible for one
resonance peak; the bigger the CRR is the lower the resonance frequency is, which is
approximately in inverse ratio to the side length of the ring [15]. They match well with their
composite’s response with little blueshift for the two peaks of higher frequencies, and the
absorptivity almost keeps the same. The shifts of the absorption peaks result from the
coupling with neighboring rings and we will discuss it in the latter section. Every ring
responses for one resonant frequency and is almost independent with each other. The response
of the composite CRRs is the sum of that of each single ring’s. This characteristic of the
design can be used to design single, dual, triple and even more resonance peaks by virtue of
combining one, two, three, or more CRRs together (not shown). Especially, the resonant
frequency can be designed to the desiring frequencies by varying the ring’s perimeter. Since
the unit cell is four-fold symmetrical, it has almost the same responses to transverse electric
(TE) and transverse magnetic polarizations (TM) for normally incident EM waves, and the
absorption effect is also robust for non-normal incident angles.

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9403
 Fig. 2. Simulated absorption spectra of the triple-band MM absorber. The red, blue, green, and
black curves represent the absorptivity of the solely outer, middle, and inner CRR and their
composite, respectively.

3. Experiments
The triple-band absorber shown in Fig. 1(c) was fabricated using stand print circuit board
(PCB) technology with outer dimensions of 200mm × 200mm. We experimentally verified the
absorption performance of the MM absorber in a microwave anechoic chamber. An Agilent
N5230C vector analyzer and two broadband double-ridged horn antennas are used to emit and
receive the EM wave. Owing to the metal ground plane, the transmission is zero, only the S 11
is measured, and the absorptivity A( )  1 | S11 ( ) |2 . As shown in Fig. 3, the experimental
result (blue curve) has three absorption peaks at frequencies 4.06GHz, 6.73GHz and 9.22GHz
with absorptivity 0.99, 0.93, and 0.95, respectively, which agrees well with the simulation
results as replotted in Fig. 3 (red curve) for comparison. We also characterized the MM
absorber’s wide-angle performance as shown in Fig. 4. With the increasing of incident angle,
all these three absorptions remain above 0.9 at 50°, which result from the weaker magnetic
coupling between the top and bottom layers as the incident angle increases [13,14]. As these
experiment results reveal, the designed MM absorber operates quite well over a wide range of
angles of incidence for all three absorption peaks.

Fig. 3. Comparison of the absorption spectra of the triple-band MM absorber between

experimental (blue curve) and simulated (red curve) results.

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9404
 Fig. 4. Simulation and experimental results of the MM absorber at various angles of incidence.

4. Discussion
To get an insight into the origin of the triple-band absorption, we focus on the EM response of
the triple CRRs and the metal ground plane at normal to plane incidence with the electric field
polarized along the vertical sides and the magnetic field along the horizontal sides of the
rings. (See Fig. 1. Owing to the symmetry design, it’s the same with another polarization). We
monitor the electric fields, surface current densities on the top and bottom metal layers at
resonance frequencies as shown in Fig. 5. The ring’s sides that are parallel to the electric
component of incident wave can strong couple with the electric field and supply an
independent electric dipole response, and the surface charge oscillates along the sides driven
by the external electric field (Figs. 5(a)–5(c)). The magnetic component of the incident wave
penetrates between the top and bottom layers and generates antiparallel surface current on the
CRRs and the ground metal plane, leading to the magnetic coupling and the response (Figs.
5(d)–5(i)). Figure 5 indicates that the absorption originate from the dipole electric response of
the top rings and the magnetic response between the two layers. The first, second, and third
absorption associated with the EM resonance of the outer, middle, and inner ring,
respectively. The resonant frequencies are inversely proportional to the side length Li (i = 1, 2,
3),  1 Li [15,16], which indicates that the longer the ring’s side is the smaller the resonant
frequency will be.

Fig. 5. (a)–(c) Distribution of normal electric fields and (d)–(i) surface current distributions for
the three peaks of absorption at ω1 = 4.06GHz, ω2 = 6.75GHz, and ω3 = 9.24GHz. (d)–(f)
surface current distributions on the top rings, (g)–(i) surface current distributions on the ground
plane.

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9405
 As aforementioned there exists blueshifts of the triple-band absorption peaks relative to
those of the outer, middle, and inner rings along, the mechanism can also be induced from the
surface current distributions. Figures 5(d)–5(f) indicate that each resonance absorption
originates from not only the dipole resonance with the external electric field but also a
coupled-mode pair. There are anti-parallel surface current oscillations in the neighboring
rings, which results from the interaction between the neighboring rings. The resonance
coupling between the neighboring metallic sides depends greatly on the distance between
them; the greater the distance, the weaker the coupling [17]. The induced currents on the
neighboring sides will excite the resonant magnetic response of the triple rings. Compared
with each ring’ s EM response with external electric field and the magnetic response between
the top ring and bottom metal plane, the electromagnet response between neighboring rings is
weak. They may be identified as first and second order of EM response. Compared with the
single ring, the interaction among these three rings amounts for the blueshifts of the resonant
absorption frequency, but there is almost no influence to the strength of absorption. The
blueshift can be decreased by increasing the distance between neighboring rings.

Fig. 6. Absorption spectra for different material properties of the metal layers and the dielectric
layer.

We further investigated the origin of the loss to understand the contributions of each part
of the MM absorber. Figure 6 shows the absorption spectra of the absorber under four
different loss conditions of metal layers and dielectric spacer: (i) PEC and lossless FR4 (green
curve), (ii) PEC and loss FR4 (black curve), (iii) copper and lossless FR4 (red curve), (iv)
copper and loss FR4 (blue curve). As can be seen from the absorption spectra, the latter three
composites exhibit three absorptions at the same frequencies with different absorptivity.
Without Ohmic loss, the sole dielectric loss can also realize near unity absorption (black).
However, it’s not the same with loss metal and lossless dielectric composite (red); the lower
the frequency is, the lower the absorption will be. Therefore we can’t judge how much energy
is consumed in dielectric and in metal just by comparing under different conditions of
material’s property in our design. To our multiband absorber design, the absorption arises
from both the dielectric losses and Ohmic losses, but the Ohmic losses of the higher frequency
absorption take more proportion compared with the lowest frequency absorption. This is
different with results in [2,10,18]. To our knowledge, such an absorption mechanism has not
been reported in single-band absorber [8,10,18].
5. Summary
In conclusion, we have designed, fabricated, and characterized a triple-band microwave
absorber, with experimental absorptivity of 0.99, 0.93, and 0.95 at three separated frequencies
respectively. The designed MM absorber is polarization insensitive and could achieve wide-
angle absorption. Experimental results show that the triple absorptions remain over 0.9 as the
incident angle ranging from 5° to 50°. Using the CRR as building block, the absorber has a
very simple geometry structure, and it’s easy to realize single, dual, triple, even more band
resonance absorption in a compact single particle unit cell. Other multiband absorbing devices

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9406
 lack this flexibility. With geometrical scalability, this multiband MM absorber may operate at
other frequency regimes with near unity absorption (a terahertz triple-band absorber will be
presented in another paper). These advantages aforementioned make it a good candidate to
design a high-performance absorber used in explosives detection, bolometer, thermal detector,
spectroscopic imaging, etc.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under
Grants Nos. 60990320, 60990321, 60990324, 60871016, and 60901011 and in part by the 111
Project under Grant No. 111-2-05. X. P. Shen acknowledges support in part from the Science
Foundation of China University of Mining and Technology under Grant No. 2007A031 and in
part from the Graduate Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province under Grant No.
CX09B_045Z.

#144611 - $15.00 USD Received 22 Mar 2011; revised 25 Apr 2011; accepted 26 Apr 2011; published 28 Apr 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 9 May 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 10 / OPTICS EXPRESS 9407

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