This article presents a thermal-switchable metamaterial absorber (TSMA) based on the phase-change material of vanadium dioxide (VO2). VO2 thin film was deposited on sapphire substrate by magnetron sputtering followed by vacuum annealing treatment. Then, the prepared VO2 film was sliced into tiny chips for thermal-switchable elements. The surface structure of TSMA was realized by loading four VO2 chips into a square metallic loop. The absorption frequency of TSMA was located at 7.3 GHz at room temperature and switched to 6.8 GHz when the temperature was heated above the critical phase transition temperature of VO2. A VO2-based TSMA prototype was fabricated and measured to verify this design. The design is expected to be used in metasurface antennas, sensors, detectors, etc.

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Considering that typically more than two pin diodes or other tunable elements are required in the unit cell of polarization-insensitive reconfigurable metasurfaces (RMs), this paper proposes a new approach to design a polarization-insensitive RM unit using only one VO2 chip. A polarization-insensitive phase-modulated metasurface (PMM) using single VO2 chip is presented. The surface layer is composed of an outer ring and an inner cross, with a VO2 chip loaded at the connection of the cross. As the VO2 chip can be connected with the metal patch on all sides, only one VO2 chip is used in this polarization-insensitive design. By thermally controlling VO2 chips switch between low-resistance and high-resistance states, the PMM achieves a 1-bit phase shift within 180° ± 37° from 7.85 to 15 GHz. A prototype is fabricated and measured, and the measured results have verified the correction of the design and analysis of the designed PMM.