Design and Manufacture of Periodic Metastructure Materials with Broadband EM Absorption

Computational modeling and optimization were utilized to design the metastructure of a polymer nanocomposite system. The goal is to minimize the reflection loss (RL) and broaden the absorption bandwidth. Truncated cones with a perfect electric conductor on the top surface were chosen. With this innovative metastructure, the absorption bandwidth of RL at -20dB has been increased from 0, as observed in non-porous materials, to 1.83 GHz. The samples with optimized metastructures were manufactured using hot pressing and computer numerical control (CNC) machining techniques. This approach provided an efficient way to design and precisely manufacture materials with targeted EM absorption.