Tunable broadband metamaterial absorber consisting of ferrite slabs and a copper wire

A tunable broadband metamaterial absorber is demonstrated at microwave frequencies in this paper. The metamaterial absorber is composed of ferrite slabs with large resonance beamwidths and a copper wire. The theoretical analysis for the effective media parameters is presented to show the mechanism for achieving the perfect absorptivity characteristic. The numerical results of transmission, reflectance, and absorptivity indicate that the metamaterial absorber exhibits a near perfect impedance-match to free space and a high absorptivity of 98.2% for one layer and 99.97% for two layers at 9.9 GHz. The bandwidth with the absorptivity above 90% is about 2.3 GHz. Moreover, the absorption band can be shifted linearly in a wide frequency range by adjusting the magnetic bias. This metamaterial absorber opens a way to prepare perfectly matched layers for engineering applications.