A Transparent and Flexible Polarization Conversion Electromagnetic Scatterer

This letter presents a novel design for a transparent and flexible electromagnetic scatterer aimed at reducing radar cross section (RCS). Made from low-resistance indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film, PET, and PVC plastic, it achieves up to 81.3% transparency. The innovative unit design overcomes ITO's conductivity limitations and broadens bandwidth. Using the Pancharatnam-Berry phase principle, rotating the top-layer conductive structure creates encoded supercells. The letter explores RCS optimization using multiple algorithms, analyzes RCS changes in metasurface scatterer (MSS) with ITO patches in the conformal state, and compares the effects of ITO and copper on RCS performance. Multialgorithm optimization results in over 10 dB RCS reduction from 8.5 GHz to 19.8 GHz, even under 2π curvature or 45° oblique incidence. With a compact size (0.135<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">λ</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub>), transparency(81.3%), flexibility(central angle up to 2π), and wideband performance (80%), the scatterer is ideal for applications like multispectral scattering, antenna radomes, and transparent windows.