Transparent ultrawideband polarization-insensitive absorber with optimal thickness based on a grid ITO structure

Abstract

With the large-scale commercialization of broadband wireless communication technologies, interference between spatial electromagnetic waves (EMWs) is becoming increasingly serious. As devices for solving electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems, microwave absorbers (MAs) have become increasingly mature with the rapid development of artificial electromagnetic structures. However, current MAs still face challenges in terms of wideband absorption, wide-angle absorption, thickness, etc., which limits their application scenarios. Therefore, this paper proposes a transparent ultrawideband polarization-insensitive absorber based on a grid indium tin oxide (ITO) structure. This design adopts a multilayer structure with a total thickness of 3.525 mm (0.114λ L ), close to the predicted minimum thickness, to expand the bandwidth. The grid-patterned ITO film resonant structure and ITO film ground plane are designed to further improve optical transmittance by increasing duty ratios. Simulation results demonstrate over 90% absorption from 9.7 GHz to 69.2 GHz, with a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 150.8%. The absorber has good incident angle stability and polarization insensitivity. When the incident angle varies within 0-60°, the proposed absorber maintains an absorption close to 80% over an ultrawideband range, and the absorption remains nearly constant when the polarization angle changes from 0° to 90°. The fabricated sample shows a visible light transmittance of approximately 73.2%, and shows an absorption performance consistent with simulations in the 6-38 GHz frequency range, validating the effectiveness of the proposed design. Due to its transparent, ultrawideband absorption, wide incident angle stability and polarization insensitivity properties, this proposed absorber has important guiding significance for applications in high-frequency transparent electronics, radars, communications systems and other devices working in the microwave frequency band.