Miniaturization for ultrathin metamaterial perfect absorber in the VHF band

An efficient resolution for ultrathin metamaterial perfect absorber (MPA) is proposed and demonstrated in the VHF radio band (30–300 MHz). By adjusting the lumped capacitors and the through vertical interconnects, the absorber is miniaturized to be only λ/816 and λ/84 for its thickness and periodicity with respect to the operating wavelength (at 102 MHz), respectively. The detailed simulation and calculation show that the MPA can maintain an absorption rate over 90% in a certain range of incident angle and with a wide variation of capacitance. Additionally, we utilized the advantages of the initial single-band structure to realize a nearly perfect dual-band absorber in the same range. The results were confirmed by both simulation and experiment at oblique incidence angles up to 50°. Our work is expected to contribute to the actualization of future metamaterial-based devices working at radio frequency.