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Electromagnetic metamaterials are artificial subwavelength composites with periodic structures, which can interact strongly with the incident light to achieve effective control of the light field. Metamaterial absorbers can achieve nearly 100% perfect absorption of incident light at a specific frequency, so they are widely used in sensors, optical switches, communication, and other fields. Based on the development history of metamaterials, this paper discusses the research background and significance of metamaterial perfect absorbers. Some perfect absorption mechanisms, such as impedance matching and coherent perfect absorption, are discussed. According to the functional division, the narrowband, dual frequency, multi-frequency, broadband, and tunable metamaterial perfect absorbers are briefly described.

In order to extend the performance of radar absorbing materials, it is necessary to design new structures with wideband properties and large angles of incidence which are also as thin as possible. The objective of this work, realized within the framework of the SAFAS project (self-complementary surface with low signature) is, then, the development of an ultra-wideband microwave absorber of low thickness. The design of such material requires a multilayered structure composed with dielectric layers, metasurfaces, and wide-angle impedance matching layers. This solution has been realized with on-the-shelf materials, and measured to validate the concept. At normal incidence, the bandwidth ratio, defined for a magnitude of the reflection coefficient below −10 dB, is 4.7:1 for an absorber with a total thickness of 11.5 mm, which corresponds to λ/7 at the lowest operating frequency. For an incidence of 60°, this bandwidth ratio is reduced to 3.8:1, but the device remains ultra-wideband.

Perfect metamaterial absorbers have attracted researchers’ attention in solar energy harvesting and utilization. An ideal solar absorber should provide high absorption, be ultra-wideband, and be insensitive to polarization and incident angles, which brings challenges to research. In this paper, we proposed and optimized an ultra-wideband solar absorber based on Ti-Al2O3 cross elliptical disk arrays to obtain the ultra-wideband absorption of solar energy. The addition of a cavity greatly improves the energy-absorbing effect in the operating band, which has research value. The absorption spectrum and field distribution were analyzed by the finite difference time domain method. For the physical mechanism, the electric and magnetic field distribution indicates that ultra-wideband absorption is caused by propagation surface plasmon resonance (SPR), localized SPR and Fabry–Perot (F-P) resonance excited between Ti and Al2O3 disks. The results demonstrate that the absorption bandwidth with the absorption rate beyond 90% reaches 1380 nm (385–1765 nm), and the average absorption reaches an astonishing 98.78%. The absorption bandwidth matches the main radiation bandwidth of the solar energy, which is approximately 295–2500 nm according to the data from the literature, and the total thickness of the structure is only 445 nm. Moreover, the ultra-wideband solar absorber is insensitive to the polarization angle and oblique incidence angle. The proposed ultra-wideband solar absorber has research and application value in solar energy harvesting, photothermal conversion and utilization.

There are more than thousands of concepts for harvesting wave energy, and wave energy converters (WECs) are diverse in operating principles, design geometries and deployment manners, leading to misconvergence in WEC technologies. Among numerous WEC devices, the point absorber wave energy converter (PAWEC) concept is one of the simplest, most broad-based and most promising concepts that has been investigated intensively all over the world. However, there are only a few reviews focusing on PAWECs, and the dynamical advancement of PAWECs merits an up-to-date review. This review aims to provide a critical overview of the state of the art in PAWEC development, comparing and contrasting various PAWEC devices and discussing recent research and development efforts and perspectives of PAWECs in terms of prototyping, hydrodynamic modelling, power take-off mechanism and control.

In this study, we have demonstrated the fabrication of perforated absorbers on two substrates, i.e., ITO/PET and Twill weave cloth. Perforation is required to enable the use of absorbers in the application where air breathability, ventilation and thermal equilibrium are necessary. For perforations, holes were machined in all the layers of the absorber. To ascertain the effect of perforations on both the absorbers’ performance, simulation, using ANSYS HFSS software, was carried out. In the ITO/PET-based absorber, it was found that there were no significant effects of the variation of hole radius on the absorption. However, for textile-based absorber, the hole radius had a significant impact on the absorption. The proposed ITO/PET-based fabricated MMA can absorb radiation in the frequency band from 7.64 GHz to 16.6 GHz, whereas the textile-based absorber can absorb more than 90% of the frequency band corresponding to 6.61 GHz to 17.91 GHz. The measured absorptions are found to be in good agreement with the simulated results. Furthermore, perforation gives two mechanical advantages to the absorber: first, it reduces the absorber’s weight by 25% and 35%, respectively, in the case of ITO/PET- and textile-based absorber, and second, it increases the bendability of the absorber. Through experiments, we found that the perforated sample bends by an extra 22 ∘ and 24 ∘ , respectively, for ITO/PET- and TWC-based absorber when placed as a cantilever. Theoretically, it was calculated that there would be a four-time increase in the absorber’s bendability due to perforations.

A bistable nonlinear energy sink conceived to mitigate the vibrations of host structural systems is considered in this paper. The hosting structure consists of two coupled symmetric linear oscillators (LOs), and the nonlinear energy sink (NES) is connected to one of them. The peculiar nonlinear dynamics of the resulting three-degree-of-freedom system is analytically described by means of its slow invariant manifold derived from a suitable rescaling, coupled with a harmonic balance procedure, applied to the governing equations transformed in modal coordinates. On the basis of the first-order reduced model, the absorber is tuned and optimized to mitigate both modes for a broad range of impulsive load magnitudes applied to the LOs. On the one hand, for low-amplitude, in-well, oscillations, the parameters governing the bistable NES are tuned in order to make it functioning as a linear tuned mass damper (TMD); on the other, for high-amplitude, cross-well, oscillations, the absorber is optimized on the basis of the invariant manifolds features. The analytically predicted performance of the resulting tuned bistable nonlinear energy sink (TBNES) is numerically validated in terms of dissipation time; the absorption capabilities are eventually compared with either a TMD and a purely cubic NES. It is shown that, for a wide range of impulse amplitudes, the TBNES allows the most efficient absorption even for the detuned mode, where a single TMD cannot be effective.

An ideal solar-thermal absorber requires efficient selective absorption with a tunable bandwidth, excellent thermal conductivity and stability, and a simple structure for effective solar thermal energy conversion. Despite various solar absorbers having been demonstrated, these conditions are challenging to achieve simultaneously using conventional materials and structures. Here, we propose and demonstrate three-dimensional structured graphene metamaterial (SGM) that takes advantages of wavelength selectivity from metallic trench-like structures and broadband dispersionless nature and excellent thermal conductivity from the ultrathin graphene metamaterial film. The SGM absorbers exhibit superior solar selective and omnidirectional absorption, flexible tunability of wavelength selective absorption, excellent photothermal performance, and high thermal stability. Impressive solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency of 90.1% and solar-to-vapor efficiency of 96.2% have been achieved. These superior properties of the SGM absorber suggest it has a great potential for practical applications of solar thermal energy harvesting and manipulation. Here, the authors demonstrate a selective solar thermal absorber with wavelength selectivity, arising from metallic trench-like structures, using broadband dispersionless ultrathin graphene metamaterial film, with excellent thermal conductivity.

We theoretically and experimentally proposed a new structure of ultra-wideband and thin perfect metamaterial absorber loaded with lumped resistances. The thin absorber was composed of four dielectric layers, the metallic double split ring resonators (MDSRR) microstructures and a set of lumped resistors. The mechanism of the ultra-wideband absorption was analyzed and parametric study was also carried out to achieve ultra-wideband operation. The features of ultra-wideband, polarization-insensitivity, and angle-immune absorption were systematically characterized by the angular absorption spectrum, the near electric-field, the surface current distributions and dielectric and ohmic losses. Numerical results show that the proposed metamaterial absorber achieved perfect absorption with absorptivity larger than 80% at the normal incidences within 4.52~25.42 GHz (an absolute bandwidth of 20.9GHz), corresponding to a fractional bandwidth of 139.6%. For verification, a thin metamaterial absorber was implemented using the common printed circuit board method and then measured in a microwave anechoic chamber. Numerical and experimental results agreed well with each other and verified the desired polarization-insensitive ultra-wideband perfect absorption.

Graphene's unique electrical properties make it an ideal material for conductive inks, enabling efficient electromagnetic wave absorption at WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) frequency bands. This paper presents the preparation of graphene-based conductive ink for use in flexible metamaterial absorbers on paper substrates, targeting WiMAX applications. The ink was synthesized to ensure homogeneous dispersion and excellent conductivity, suitable for printing on flexible, environmentally friendly paper substrates. The ink formulation consisted of 6% modified graphene, 0.75% cellulose acetate butyrate binder, and solvent. This ink formulation has a resistance value of approximately 22 Ω cm and sheet resistance of 7.6 Ω/square. The resistance of ink can be altered by changing the binder content for the different absorption ranges. The resulting metamaterial absorber demonstrated superior flexibility, light weight, and effective absorption performance within the WiMAX frequency range. The unit cell consists of a cross-shaped resonator and a thin layer of aluminum behind the ground layer. Cross-shaped layers of graphene ink are printed on Kodak printing paper, making them completely bendable along the surfaces. This flexible absorber is environmentally friendly because it does not waste chemicals and is biodegradable. A full-wave simulation was conducted for the graphene material absorber (GMA) prototype, and it was then fabricated using a two-axis computer numerical control (CNC) printer. The experimental results showed that the absorption of incident angle-insensitive GMA at 5.8 GHz reached 95%.

In this study, an ultra-compact metamaterial absorber (MMA) has been proposed for microwave applications comprising two modified square-shaped resonators printed on a dielectric substrate and terminated by a metallic plane. The proposed MMA exhibits perfect absorption at 3.36 GHz, 3.95 GHz and 10.48 GHz, covering S- and X-band applications. The absorber is ultra-compact (0.112 λ) in size and ultra-thin (0.018 λ) in thickness at the lowest resonating frequency. The normalized impedance, constitutive electromagnetic parameters, electric field and surface current distribution have been studied to understand the physical mechanism of the triple-band absorption. Furthermore, the absorber is analyzed with different polarization and incident angles for transverse electric waves. The proposed MMA has been experimentally demonstrated to verify the results obtained from simulations. Moreover, the effect of over-layer thickness is investigated to examine the sensing application of the absorber.