Screen Overprinted Flexible Radar Absorber Composed of Planar Resistor Loaded Metamaterials

Flexible metamaterial absorber manufactured with a layer-by-layer screen-overprinting methodology has been theoretically and experimentally studied in this letter. The effective absorption of the absorber is in the X-band (8.3-10.9 GHz) and its working principle has been verified and analyzed. Benefiting from the elimination of the parasitic effect brought by package-free and direct-contacted planar resistors, high agreement between simulations and measurements has been achieved. The working frequency band can be easily tuned by replacing different supporting and covering layers to fit various purposes. Mechanical flexibility of the absorber enables its conformal coverage to aiming objects for radar cross-section reduction, and is experimentally confirmed on metallic cylinders with different diameters. It has been clearly demonstrated that the high-efficiency and cost-effective automatic screen-overprinting method matches perfectly for large-size flexible absorbers and their industrial applications.