A Magnetically Programmable Metasurface for Versatile Scattering Manipulation in the Microwave Band

ABSTRACT Reconfigurable metasurfaces have shown powerful capabilities and flexibility for scattering control. Nevertheless, widely investigated electrically reconfigurable metasurfaces confront multiple challenges, such as the need for direct bias circuit connections, which greatly limit their practical applications. Herein, we propose a magnetically driven metasurface platform that consists of a magneto‐responsive electromagnetically reconfigurable metasurface and a magnetic generator, enabling near‐field magnetic generation and electromagnetic field modulation. Each metasurface element can be controlled by the surrounding magnetic field. A transition between the 0 and 1 scattering states occurs when the magnetic field fluctuates across the threshold. The designed element achieves a phase modulation of 180° ± 20° around 2.4 GHz, with the in‐band insertion loss below 1 dB. For experimental verification, a magnetic field generator (MFG) is utilized to produce a magnetic field surrounding the metasurface, facilitating non‐contact actuation and the precise control of each magneto‐responsive element. An 8 × 8 magnetically programmable metasurface array (MPMS) is produced. Under the modulation of the surrounding magnetic field, the MPMS can be independently coded. Using a customized external magnetic field configuration, we conduct experiments to validate the performance of the proposed magnetically driven programmable metasurface in RCS reduction and retroreflective beam control.