Experimental Demonstration of a 3D-Printed Arched Metasurface Carpet Cloak

Metasurfaces have an extraordinary wavefront manipulation capability to generate various functionalities with ultrathin planar structures and provide an unprecedented means of easily achieving invisibility carpet cloaks in practice. However, due to the limitation of the fabrication method, great challenges exist in the implementation of curved or spherical metasurface-based cloaks with good performance. Here, a novel fabrication method that combines 3D printing via stereolithography and injection molding of liquid metal is proposed, and an arched metasurface carpet cloak operating in the microwave domain is realized successfully as a demonstration. Experiments show that the proposed ultrathin and polarization-independent cloak has good stealth performance in terms of bandwidth and angular span. Notably, the fabrication method is also suitable for obtaining other metasurfaces and metamaterials with arbitrary shapes, which may greatly promote the practical application of artificial electromagnetic structures.