Silver Nanoparticle-Based Inkjet-Printed Metamaterial Absorber on Flexible Paper

Abstract

In this letter, a novel, flexible inkjet-printed metamaterial absorber is proposed. The unit cell consists of a miniaturized Jerusalem-cross resonator and a completely conductive bottom. Because the conductive patterns are inkjet-printed using silver nanoparticle inks on paper, the proposed metamaterial absorber is flexible. It is also eco-friendly because it does not produce any chemical waste. In this letter, the working principle of the proposed miniaturized unit cell is explained, and parametric simulations are described. The inkjet-printing process is delineated, and the silver nanoparticle inks and paper used are characterized. The performance of the proposed absorber is demonstrated with a full-wave simulation and measurements at the X-band. The experimental results show that the absorption rate at 9.09 GHz is greater than 99% at the normal incidence. Angular and polarization insensitivity are also experimentally demonstrated.