Dr Sarah Clendinning - Queen's University Belfast

Undesired scattering of incident electromagnetic waves is a problem for security and modern communication or satellite systems, as these reflections can interfere with the signal of interest or allow bad actors to detect devices. An attractive solution is to ‘cloak’ the device using wideband electromagnetic absorbers to mitigate against these unwanted signals. Implementing these absorbers presents a range of challenges, for example, maintaining a compact size while operating over the desired frequency range or ensuring that the device performs well for multiple angles of incidence with various polarisations. 

Historically these absorbers have been designed for operation as planar structures. However, this is suboptimal as their performance is dependent on the incidence of the impinging wavefront and most devices that require ‘cloaking’ are not planar. This project aims to use a combination of 3D-printing techniques and inkjet printing to create an ultra-wideband absorbing curved surface that provides cloaking from multiple positions.