摘要：The demand of high-end electromagnetic wave absorbing materials puts forward higher requirements on comprehensive performances of small thickness,lightweight,broadband,and strong ***,a novel multi-layer stepped metamaterial absorber with gradient electromagnetic properties is *** complex permittivity and permeability of each layer are tailored via the proportion of carbonyliron and carbon-fiber dispersing into the epoxy *** proposed metamaterial is further optimized via adjusting the electromagnetic parameters and geometric sizes of each *** with the four-layer composite with gradient electromagnetic properties which could only realize reflection loss(RL)of less than−6 dB in 2.0-40 GHz,the optimized stepped metamaterial with the same thickness and electromagnetic properties realizes less than−10 dB in the relevant frequency ***,the RL of less than−15 dB is achieved in the frequency range of 11.2-21.4 GHz and 28.5-40 *** multiple electromagnetic wave absorption mechanism is discussed based on the experimental and simulation results,which is believed to be attributed to the synergy effect induced by multi-scale structures of the ***,combining multi-layer structures and periodic stepped structures into a novel gradient absorbing metamaterial would give new insights into designing microwave absorption devices for broadband electromagnetic protections.