Narrowband Metamaterial Absorber for Terahertz Secure Labeling

Flexible metamaterial films, fabricated by photolithography on a thin copper-backed polyimide substrate, are used to mark or barcode objects securely. The films are characterized by continuous-wave terahertz spectroscopic ellipsometry and visualized by a scanning confocal imager coupled to a vector network analyzer that constructed a terahertz spectral hypercube. These films exhibit a strong, narrowband, polarization- and angle-insensitive absorption at wavelengths near 1 mm. Consequently, the films are nearly indistinguishable at visible or infrared wavelengths and may be easily observed by terahertz imaging only at the resonance frequency of the film.