Broadband Absorber for the Microwave Region Using Ball-Milled Graphite Gratings

A broadband absorber for the microwave region based on a dielectric structure with ball-milled graphite gratings has been proposed. In this absorber, electromagnetic waves in the frequency range of 5.4 to 18 GHz are absorbed efficiently with more than 90% absorptivity. The ball-milled graphite with high a imaginary part of its permittivity used in this work can exhibit dielectric loss to some extent, while there is almost no magnetic loss owing to its low permeability. By comparing the electric field of a single absorbing layer and our grating structure, we found that a λ/4 resonance mode with a narrowband property is excited in the single-layer structure, while the cavity-mode resonance and the edge diffraction effects are the main reasons for the broadband absorption of our designed grating structure. This result provides a guideline for microwave-absorbing materials to greatly extend their bandwidth using a simple structure.