Ultrathin Metasurface-Enabled Electromagnetic Illusion for Target Platforms

Benefiting from the unprecedented wavefront manipulation capability of metamaterials and metasurfaces, electromagnetic illusion technology has enabled customized tailoring of scattering characteristics with high precision. However, most existing electromagnetic illusion schemes are restricted to generating spurious scattering fields from empty space, suffering from inherent limitations such as narrow operating bandwidth and single application scenario, which severely hinder their applicability and reliability in complex electromagnetic environments. To overcome these bottlenecks, we propose an ultrathin meta-illusion for a target platform, which can simultaneously conceal the scattering signature of a real object and replicate that of a desired virtual target via amplitude and phase control of a metasurface. As a proof of concept, we design and fabricate a meta-illusion device that mimics the electromagnetic response of a scaled-down car, and experimentally validate its performance in the microwave regime. Experimental results show that with the target object loaded on the device, the meta-illusion achieves the correlation coefficients of near-field distributions and far-field patterns better than 86% and 85%, respectively, verifying the high fidelity of the proposed illusion scheme. This work provides a promising pathway for advanced electromagnetic camouflage, intelligent illusion engineering, and multifunctional metasurface systems.