Ultra-wideband EMP-shielded glass windows using metal mesh films for civilian and military infrastructure

A hybrid window structure integrated with metal mesh films (MMFs) is proposed for electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection in both civilian and military applications. The structure operates over an ultra-wide frequency range from 0.18 to 18 GHz. To the best of our knowledge, research on EMP-shielding windows remains limited in terms of frequency coverage, shielding effectiveness (SE), and optical transparency (OT), with most studies focusing on electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding windows that achieve SE < 80 dB. This work presents four EMP shielding window configurations, each achieving SE > 80 dB and incorporating, for the first time, an asymmetric hexagonal mesh design. The metal mesh, deposited on a transparent dielectric substrate, exhibits OT of 75.5 % and a sheet resistance of 0.1 Ω/□. Compared to conventional square and symmetric hexagonal meshes, the asymmetric mesh improves SE by up to 4.7 dB at 10 GHz, with only a slight reduction in OT of about 3 %, demonstrating a superior balance between electromagnetic performance and transparency. Four window configurations are examined through both simulation and measurement, with square meshes from our previous work included for comparison. For civilian applications, double-pane glass with two MMF layers achieves average SE above 60 dB while maintaining OT over 40 %. For military applications, three-layer structures reach SE up to 90 dB with OT above 30 %. These results confirm that the proposed configurations provide broadband EMP shielding with sufficient transparency, offering a practical and scalable solution for EMP SE windows.