An omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber made of metamaterials

By Qiang Cheng, T. Cui, Wei Xiang Jiang, B. Cai. 2010

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In a recent theoretical work by Narimanov and Kildishev (2009 Appl. Phys. Lett. 95 041106) an optical omnidirectional light absorber based on metamaterials was proposed, in which theoretical analysis and numerical simulations showed that all optical waves hitting the absorber are trapped and absorbed. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of an omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber in the microwave frequency. The proposed device is composed of non-resonant and resonant metamaterial structures, which can trap and absorb electromagnetic waves coming from all directions spirally inwards without any reflections due to the local control of electromagnetic fields. It is shown that the absorption rate can reach 99 per cent in the microwave frequency. The all-directional full absorption property makes the device behave like an ‘electromagnetic black body’, and the wave trapping and absorbing properties simulate, to some extent, an ‘electromagnetic black hole.’ We expect that such a device could be used as a thermal emitting source and to harvest electromagnetic waves.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Structural Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f12b11d0e68fe4841f78524377e699aa4d3b76d

Citations in the corpus