A Stretchable Metamaterial Absorber With Deformation Compensation Design at Microwave Frequencies

A stretchable microwave metamaterial absorber with specific pattern design is proposed and fabricated in this paper to improve the stability of microwave absorption for deformation. Compensation mechanism is revealed by the electrical current loop for resonance absorption excitation in an equivalent circuit model. The proposed metamaterial absorber with a slotted cross pattern is compared with the conventional cross pattern absorber. A stretchable silver conductive ink validates the silk screen printing of resistive patterns on flexible polydimethylsiloxane substrate and hence realizes the stretching experiments. In a 25% stretch, the resonant frequency of the compensated absorber shifts only 0.5% for TM polarization, comparing to the 8% shifting of the conventional structure.