Fabric‐Based Smart Metasurface

Abstract

AbstractFabric presents several advantages including excellent flexibility, lightweight, bend resilience, breathable properties, and significant price advantage compared to commercial low‐loss boards, providing a natural advantage for the preparation of flexible electromagnetic (EM) devices and wearable systems. A key challenge when using fabric as the substrate for active devices lies in the contradiction between the poor high‐temperature resistance of fabric materials and the welding requirements for semiconductor components, leading to a significant gap between flexible and traditional RF technology. Benefiting from the unique fiber structure of fabric materials, a conjecture is creatively proposed for integrating lumped components onto fabric substrates through the sewing method and successfully verifying its validity and stability. As an application, a fabric‐based smart metasurface (FSM) is designed and realized for potential portable EM protection applications. The proposed FSM has the advantage of good flexibility, low cost, and a high strength‐to‐weight ratio. By carefully designing the structure of the metasurface and also the sensing module, large‐angle stable EM performance is achieved, and the FSM can function well even under highly distorted conditions. The proposed method and product inspire promising application aspects in wearable electronics, portable EM protection, and related flexible RF technologies.