Frequency and bandwidth modulation of a wide band-stop metamaterial for EMI shielding applications

•This manuscript proposed a unique mirror symmetric µ-near-zero wide band-stop metamaterial shield for EMI shielding applications in the C- and X-band.•The proposed design intends to employ a shared metamaterial structure to serve two distinct microwave bands with extended shielding bandwidth.•The wide band-stop characteristics as well as frequency and bandwidth modulation flexibility make the structure unique for EMI shielding applications.•The simple shorting metallic strip in the proposed structure can control the shielding spectrum from C-band to X-band with an outstanding band-stop enhancement capability of 170.63%, which significantly outperforms the existing state-of-the-art metamaterials.•The proposed metamaterial prototypes are fabricated and experimentally verified their shielding performance and show promising results for wideband EMI shielding applications.