Comment on Lu et al. Ultrathin Terahertz Dual-Band Perfect Metamaterial Absorber Using Asymmetric Double-Split Rings Resonator. Symmetry 2018, 10, 293

Abstract

In this study, the design of a dual-band terahertz absorber, previously published by Lu et al. (Symmetry 2018, 10, 293), was re-simulated. Our findings showed significantly different absorption results from those published in the article. A detailed analysis was conducted to explain this discrepancy, which was attributed to the reflection of an unaccounted orthogonal component of the waves from the design, rather than absorption. The metasurface design has two resonances at 4.48 THz and 4.76 THz, respectively. It was reported that at these frequencies, the structure achieved absorption of 98.6% and 98.5%, respectively. However, in our results, it was found that at the second resonance (4.76 THz), the structure acted as a strong cross-polarization converter, reflecting a significant amount of incident energy in the cross-polarization component of the reflected wave. When this component is considered in the reflection coefficient calculations, the absorption reduces to 41% (from 98.5%), which is not an acceptable level for an absorber. In addition, the structure was simulated for both lossy and lossless (FR4) substrate cases to understand the effect of substrate losses. The results showed that the absorption response significantly deteriorates at the first resonance (4.48 THz) in the case of a lossy FR4 substrate.