Reconfigurable Origami Metamaterial for Broadband Absorption and Polarization Conversion

Origami has lately surfaced as a promising method for designing valuable materials. Inspired by the origami concept, a multifunctional metamaterial derived from an origami structure is proposed. By mechanically stretching or compressing the given metamaterial, it can be converted from an absorber to a linear-circular polarization converter (LCPC) in the gigahertz (GHz) range. The absorption bandwidth of the constructed metamaterial is improved as the presented absorber uses high-impedance surfaces. The properties of origami are employed to mitigate effects during LCPC operations. When the metamaterial operates as an LCPC, the frequency range with an axial ratio of less than 3 decibels is from 14.77 to 18.35 GHz, resulting in a relative bandwidth of 21.6%. The metamaterial exhibits an absorptivity over 0.9 within a frequency range of 17.20-19.85 GHz, achieving a relative bandwidth of 14.8% while functioning as an absorber. The devised apparatus has many applications, including communication and electromagnetic stealth.