  We present the design for an absorbing metamaterial element with near unity
absorbance. Our structure consists of two metamaterial resonators that couple
separately to electric and magnetic fields so as to absorb all incident
radiation within a single unit cell layer. We fabricate, characterize, and
analyze a metamaterial absorber with a slightly lower predicted absorbance of
96%. This achieves a simulated full width at half maximum (FWHM) absorbance of
4% thus making this material ideal for imaging purposes. Unlike conventional
absorbers, our metamaterial consists solely of metallic elements. The
underlying substrate can therefore be chosen independently of the substrate's
absorptive qualities and optimized for other parameters of interest. We detail
the design and simulation process that led to our metamaterial, and our
experiments demonstrate a peak absorbance greater than 88% at 11.5 GHz.
