A High-performance Metamaterials Absorbing Structures Based on Fused Deposition Modeling

Abstract

High-performance metamaterial absorbers have attracted enormous interests both in academia and industry in last few years. The metamaterial structures are formed by periodic unit cells that can realize impedance match between metamaterial absorbers and free space to enhance the electromagnetic absorption. Metamaterials can be widely used in various military or civil realm, such as stealth technology, communication antennas and microwave imaging. Based on impedance matching principle, a fabrication method based on the fused deposition modeling of 3D printing technology to achieve metamaterial absorbing structures is proposed. Metamaterial absorbers composed of 3D printed polylactic acid (PLA) based substrate with cavities and distilled water possessing excellent electromagnetic properties is precisely designed and fabricated. Finally, a high-performance absorber which shows an absorptivity higher than 90% over an ultra-broad band from 8.2 GHz to 30.0 GHz is acquired. It is also indicated that the metamaterial absorber is polarization independent and can maintain high absorptivity within a wide range of incidence angle. The absorbers proposed here with advantages of high performance, low profile, and light weight provide a novel method of design and fabrication which may promote the research on high-performance absorbing structures.