Broadband metamaterial for optical transparency and microwave absorption

We present a metamaterial for simultaneous optical transparency and microwave absorption in broadband, which can be used as an optically transparent radar-wave absorber. The proposed metamaterial absorber is made of windmill-shaped elements with the reflection spectra featured by three absorption bands. By properly tailoring the resonances of the structure, we achieve the optimized metamaterial absorptivity that is greater than 90% from 8.3 to 17.4 GHz. In the meantime, excellent optical transmittance is achieved by use of the indium tin oxide (ITO) film with moderate surface resistance, implying that the optical properties of the metamaterial are hardly affected by the periodic meta-atoms. Both numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed metamaterial, thereby enabling a wide range of applications such as ultrathin detectors and photovoltaic solar cells in the future.