High-Resolution Fabrication Procedure for an Optically-Transparent Modular Smart Electromagnetic Skin

A Smart ElectroMagnetic Environment (SEME) is enabled by introducing smart electromagnetic (EM) skins, or metasurfaces, with the final aim of manipulating the reflection and/or transmission properties to improve the wireless interconnectivity in non-line-of-sight areas. We focus on manufacturing of passive and static smart EM skins for wavefront manipulation, to enable optically transparent and conformable solutions. The most significant technological innovation of this contribution is the creation of a metasurface by means of micro-manufactured modules on a transparent medium, which allows us to reach high-resolution standards and to work on unconventional substrates. Indeed, micro-fabrication of smart skins offers many advantages, e.g. choice of materials as in this case (i.e. transparent), miniaturization and, in turn, operation at higher frequencies. This constitutes a valuable counterpart to most literature works, which exploit “standard” technologies and substrates, such as classic PCB, severely limiting the manufacturing degrees of freedom (DoF) and material variety.