Flexible inkjet-printed metamaterial absorber for coating a cylindrical object

Abstract

In this paper, a novel flexible inkjet-printed metamaterial absorber is proposed. The unit cell of the metamaterial is designed with a modified Jerusalem-cross ring resonator and is inkjet printed with silver nanoparticle ink on a flexible polymer film. All fabrication processes are performed using a commercial printer (EPSON WF-7011). The absorber's flexibility and absorption performance are demonstrated by measuring the absorption ratio after coating the proposed absorber on a cylindrical object with a radius of 4.56 cm. An absorption rate exceeding 99% is achieved at 9.21 GHz for both flat and cylindrical surfaces. In addition, the cylindrical model attains an absorption rate higher than 96% for all polarization angles, and a high absorption rate of 95% is preserved until the incident angle is less than 30þ.