Low frequency absorption properties of a thin metamaterial absorber with cross-array on the surface of a magnetic substrate

The design, fabrication, and measurement of a metamaterial with broadband microwave absorption properties in the low frequency range are presented in this paper. The metamaterial has a layered structure with a thickness of 2.2 mm, and consists of a conventional printed circuit board (PCB) process fabricated cross array on the surface of a flake-shaped carbonyl iron (CI) powder-filled silicon rubber composite magnetic substrate backed by a metal plane. The measurement results indicate that the absorption bandwidth (defined as the frequency range with reflection coefficient below −10 dB) of the proposed structure is 2.55 GHz–5.68 GHz. The power loss mechanism was outlined according to the current distribution on and off the resonance frequency. Moreover, the absorption performance of the proposed structure for incident angles ranging from 0° to 60° for both transverse electric (TE) wave and transverse magnetic (TM) waves were exhibited.