Water metamaterial for ultra-broadband and wide-angle absorption

A subwavelength water metamaterial is proposed and analyzed for ultra-broadband perfect absorption at microwave frequencies. We experimentally demonstrate that this metamaterial shows over 90% absorption within almost the entire frequency band of 12–29.6 GHz. It is also shown that the proposed metamaterial exhibits a good thermal stability with its absorption performance almost unchanged for the temperature range from 0 to 100°C. The study of the angular tolerance of the metamaterial absorber shows its ability of working at wide angles of incidence. Given that the proposed water metamaterial absorber is low-cost and easy for manufacture, we envision it may find numerous applications in electromagnetics such as broadband scattering reduction and electromagnetic energy harvesting.