2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

A Compact and Polarization-insensitive Perfect Metamaterial

Absorber for Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting Application
Yong Zhi Cheng1, 2 , Cong Fang2 , Zhe Zhang1 , Bin Wang1 ,
Junfeng Chen3 , and Rong Zhou Gong2
1
School of Information Science and Engineering
Wuhan University of Science and Technology, 430081, China
2
School of Optical and Electronic Information
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
3
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

Abstract— A polarization-insensitive and compact metamaterial absorber (MMA) was pro-

posed in S band, which could exhibit a perfect absorption for electromagnetic (EM) energy
harvesting application. The unit cell design consists of an electric-LC (ELC) resonator structure
loaded with resistors backed by a complementary patch. The extracted effective EM parame-
ters and simulated surface current distributions of the designed MMA indicate that the perfect
absorption mainly originates from the impedance match and local magnetic resonance. The inci-
dent EM energy is mostly dissipated across resistors instead of the dielectric substrate, obviously
unlike previous designs. In addition, our design is polarization-independent for normal incident
EM waves. Moreover, the proposed MMA is also suitable for a wide variety of microwave EM
energy harvesting applications.

1. INTRODUCTION
The perfect metamaterial absorbers (PMMAs) have been gained great attentions due to potential
applications from the stealth technology, sensor to thermal imaging [1, 2] in recent years. The pi-
oneering work for PMMAs was performed by Landy et al. [1], since then many design schemes for
MMAs have been proposed and investigated [2–5]. The MMAs usually consist of two or more metal-
lic layers separated by dielectric substrate to create electromagnetic (EM) responses for impedance
matching with free space [2], which can be illustrated by the effective media theory. Full absorption
can be achieved by tuning effective permittivity (εeff ) and permeability (µeff ) to match impedance
of the MMAs [5]. The εeff and µeff of the MMAs could be tuned to match the impedance of the
free space by proper adjusting the shape, size, thickness, and properties of the metallic resonators
structure and dielectric substrate [3–5].
More recently, the EM energy harvesting application based on MMAs has been investigated
intensively since the seminal work was proposed by Ramahi, et al. [6]. EM energy harvesters require
not only full absorption but also maximum power delivery to a load to ensure that the absorbed
power is dissipated across the load [7–11], which are different to MMAs. The lossy dielectric
substrate is an indispensable part in previous MMAs designs, which play a key role for dissipating
the absorbed EM energy [11]. However, the lossy properties of the dielectric substrate of MMA
for harvesting application are not necessary. In fact, conventional antennas have been used as the
primary EM energy transmission collector, or harvesters [12, 13], but the efficiency is usually very
low in practices. Thus, the attention of researchers has been paid to the MMAs, which could be
an ideal candidate for EM energy harvester with higher efficiency in comparison to conventional
antennas [14, 15]. However, the current MMs structures for harvester remains valid for incident
EM waves with certain polarization types only, which significantly limits its practical applications.
In this work, we present the design of a polarization-independent MMA for EM energy harvesting
application. The MMA operating in the microwave regime based on an array of ELC resonators,
which can achieve not only high absorption but also channel almost all the absorbed power to a
resistive load. Compared to previous studies, our study has different advantages. Firstly, the unit
cell structure of MM harvester is compact and polarization-independent. Secondly, this study is
based on a MMA together with full absorption.
2. PHYSICAL MODEL DESIGN AND SIMULATION
Figure 1(a) shows the design scheme of the proposed MMAs array for energy harvesting application.
The unit cell of the proposed MMAs comprises the face-to-face split rings sharing the same gap,

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 2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

a dielectric substrate and a complementary patch through a via, as shown in Figs. 1(b), (c). In
our design, the four face-to-face split ring structures as an ELC resonator can be functioned to
select operation frequency. Resistors are placed as lumped network elements across the gaps on
the face-to-face split rings. Similarly to the previous MMAs based harvesters [10, 11], the proposed
structures are intended not only to harvest the impinging EM waves energy but also to channel
the collected energy. As shown in Fig. 1(c), the optimized unit cell has periodic dimensions of
px = py = 8 mm in the x-y plane and dielectric layer with the thickness of ts = 1.6 mm alone the
z direction. The other geometrical parameters are given as: l = 7.4 mm, a = 2 mm, w = 1.5 nm,
g = 2 mm, r0 = 0.2 mm, w0 = 0.5 mm, and w1 = 3 mm. The resistance value of the loaded
resistors is chosen as R = 190 Ω. A low loss dielectric Rogers RT6010(lossy) with permittivity of
εr = 10.2(1 + i0.0023) is selected as a substrate to support the resonator structure and to reduce
the resonance frequency as well as the frequency selective surfaces. The copper with thickness of
tm = 0.035 mm and conductivity of 5.8 × 108 S/m is used as the front and back metallic layers.

(b)

(a) (c)

Figure 1: Design scheme of the MMAs: (a), (c) Perspective view of the 3D array and unit cell structure,
(b) front view of the unit cell structure.

To validate the performance of the designed MMAs for EM energy harvesting application,
the numerical simulation was performed by the CST Microwave Studio based on the standard
finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method. The frequency response of the absorbance can be
calculated according to A(ω) = 1 − R(ω) − T (ω), where the frequency-dependent transmittance
T (ω) = |S21 (ω)|2 and reflectance R(ω) = |S11 (ω)|2 can be obtained from the simulation. When
transmittance T (ω) = |S21 (ω)|2 and reflectance R(ω) = |S11 (ω)|2 fall to their minimum values, the
absorbance can achieve the maximum level at resonance frequency. When perfect absorption is
observed, the EM energy harvested from the resistors rises, which is crucially important for energy
harvesters [14, 15]. It is possible to absorb both the incident electric and magnetic fields by properly
tuning the ε(ω) and µ(ω) of the designed MMAs, which has been used to explain the absorption
mechanism of the structures [1–3].

3. RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION

Figure 2(a) shows the numerical values of the reflectance R(ω), transmittance T (ω) and absorbance
A(ω). It can be observed that the T (ω) is near zero across the whole interested frequency range,
while the R(ω) and A(ω) are near 0.05% and 99.9% at 2.65 GHz, respectively. Obviously, the
designed MMA structure shows perfect absorption at 2.65 GHz. To investigate the absorption
principle of our design, the effective material EM parameters were extracted from the complex
scatter parameters (S11 and S21 ) by the standard retrieval procedure [16]. As shown in Fig. 2(b), the
real part (Re(z)) of relative impedance is near unity and the imaginary part (Im(z)) is minimized
to 0 at 2.65 GHz. It is consistent with our intent to match the impedance to the free space at
resonance, thus minimizing any reflections at the MMA interface. Figs. 2(c), (d) show the retrieved
effective permittivity ε(ω) and permeability µ(ω). It can be observed that the real part (Re(µ))
of permeability is up to negative maximal value of −19.2, while real part (Re(ε)) of permittivity

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 2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

is about 11.2 at 2.65 GHz. It indicates that the perfect absorption of the MMA mainly originate
from the negative magnetic resonance, which can be further illustrated by the surface current of
the unit cell structure.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 2: (a) Simulation results of the absorbance, reflectance, and transmttance for the MMA; the extracted
effective EM parameters (b) impedance (c) permeability, and (d) permittivity.

To further reveal the physical mechanism of the observed perfect absorption, we calculate the
surface current and electric field (Ez ) distributions in the unit cell structure at the resonance fre-
quency of 2.65 GHz. From the Fig. 3(a), it can be observed that the anti-parallel currents are excited
in the two layer metallic structures in xy plane when the incident wave is x-polarized, resulting
in magnetic dipoles resonances along y direction. As shown in Fig. 3(b), a high concentration of
electric field around the right area of face-to-face split ring structure can be observed. Thus, the
field concentration near the gap happens only at resonant frequency and therefore can be utilized
to harvest the incident EM energy.

(a) (b)

Figure 3: (a), (b) Simulated surface current and electric field (Ez ) distributions on the unit cell at the
resonance frequency.

To confirm that the impinging EM energy can be collected by the loaded resistors, we simulate
the absorbance of the MMA with loss and loss-free dielectric substrate, and the corresponding
results are depicted in Fig. 4(a). It can be observed that the absorption level of the MMA don’t
be affected with loss and loss-free dielectric substrate. Obviously, the impinging EM energy can
be absorbed by the resistors. We can conjecture that the designed structure can be modeled as a
voltage source by adding a resistor to the resonators. Thus, the designed structure is modeled as a
perfect MMA which provides maximum EM energy harvesting at the resonance. Taking a further
step, to illustrate the polarization-insensitive of our design, we give the absorbance under normal

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 2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

(a) (b)

Figure 4: Simulated absorbance under two different (a) substrate loss conditions and (b) polarization angle
(φ) for normal incidence.

incidence with different polarization angle (φ = 0◦ , 45◦ , 90◦ ), as shown in Fig. 4(b). Obviously, the
absorbance of the MMA is unchanged with different polarization angle due to the high geometric
symmetric of the unit cell structure.
4. CONCLUSION
In summary, we presented the design of MMA inspired for EM energy harvesting application. The
unit cell of the MMA demonstrated here consisted of a low loss dielectric substrate sandwiched
with an ELC resonator structure loaded with resistors and a complementary patch. The MMA is
capable of absorbing incident EM energy with unity and most importantly channelling almost all
the absorbed power to loaded resistors at 2.65 GHz. The advantages of our design are compact and
polarization-insensitive.The proposed structure is extremely thin in the longitudinal direction and
also very small in the transverse directions compared with the operation wavelength (λ0 /14.15 ×
λ0 /14.15 × λ0 /70.75 at 2.65 GHz). The proposed MMA can be used as an ideal candidate for
many potential applications, such as wireless power transfer (WPT), energy harvesting, and energy
collecting. This is due to the significant power efficiency improvement over existing electromagnetic
collectors used in these applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. U1435209) and the Youth science and technology backbone cultivation plan project of
the Wuhan University of Science and Technology (Grant No. 2016xz010).
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