A 3D Printed Tunable Fluid Metamaterial Absorber Design

A tunable fluid microwave metamaterial absorber based on water is proposed. Making use of the fluidity of water, the proposed design achieves tunability by controlling water volume where three different patterns can be formed in the unit cell to absorb microwave in various frequency bands. In addition, the proposed structure can be easily made by three-dimensional (3D) printing technology, reducing the cost and time in fabrication process. Performance of the proposed tunable absorber has been verified through both full-wave simulations and experiments in which frequency of the reflective absorption peaks are different for three patterns, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed absorber design.