Reconfigurable honeycomb metamaterial absorber having incident angular stability

Abstract

Ultrawide-angle electromagnetic wave absorbers with excellent mechanical properties are required in many diverse applications such as sensing, and stealth technologies. Here, a novel 3D reconfigurable metamaterial absorber (MMA) consisting of honeycomb and VO2 films is proposed. The proposed MMA exhibits a strong absorptivity above 90\% in the widest incident angle up to $87^\circ$ for TM- and TE- polarized oblique incidences for THz wave propagating in yoz-plane. According to simulation results, under normal incidence, when VO2 films are in the insulating state, the proposed absorber exhibits high absorptivity in the frequency band of 1-4 THz. By increasing the temperature of the whole structure, the structural transformation of VO2 occurs and turns into the metallic phase. We have shown that under oblique incidence, the ohmic losses of VO2 films especially those parallel to the direction of the incident electric field are the most important absorption principles of the proposed MMA. Furthermore, to understand the physical mechanism of absorption, the induced electric field as well as the power loss density of the proposed structure are investigated. In addition, it is shown that the presented VO2 based honeycomb absorber retains its full-coverage incident angle characteristics for TM-polarized incidences propagating in the xoz-plane. Due to the ultra wide-angle absorption (angular stability) and mechanical performance, it is expected that the presented MMA may find potential applications, such as camouflage technologies, electromagnetic interference, imaging, and sensing. To the best knowledge of authors, the proposed MMA configuration exhibits the absorptivity in the widest incident angle ever reported.