Perfect absorbers for electromagnetic wave, based on metamaterials

Metamaterials (MMs), which are not existing in nature, but artificially-engineered materials for controlling electromagnetic wave. MMs have attracted more and more research attentions, since they have shown greatly novel properties such as left-handed behavior, negative refractive index, classical analog of electromagnetically-induced transparency, and extraordinary transmission. Among MMs, MM perfect absorbers (MMPAs), which are useful to enhance the efficiency in capturing solar energy and applied to various application areas, have been rapidly developed. In general, the structure of MMPAs is very simple, which consist of three layers: patterned conductor layer, which is used for minimizing the reflection by impedance matching, dielectric layer and continuous conductor layer for blocking the transmission. In addition, the unit-cell size of general MM absorbers is only 1/3−1/5 of the working wavelength of incident electromagnetic wave. Nevertheless, the properties of general MMPAs are in problems of the absorption only at specific frequency, the narrow absorption band, the polarization sensitivity and so on. In this review paper, the introduction of recent researches in the field of MMPAs operating in different frequency ranges is presented. Moreover, the researches on the improved electromagnetic properties are discussed, which comprise multi-band, broadband, tunable, polarization-insensitive, and wide-incident-angle MMPAs. The perspectives and the future works for the further investigations and the various real applications of MMPAs are also presented.