Reconfigurable Patch Antenna with Liquid Metal Tuning Slots and 3D Printed Microfluidics

In this paper, we present the development of a novel class of reconfigurable microstrip antennas: patch antenna with liquid metal tuning slots. By manipulating liquid metal in 3D printed microfluidics bounded on top of a slotted patch antenna, various attractive reconfigurable characteristics can be achieved with simple patch topologies. Two representative designs are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of patch antenna with liquid metal tuning slots: a frequency reconfigurable patch antenna with frequency tuning bandwidth of 70% and instantaneous bandwidth of 2%; and a polarization reconfigurable patch antenna with right-hand circular polarization (RHCP), left-hand circular polarization (LHCP), and linear polarization (LP) with arbitrary orientation in x-y plane. The process for prototyping patch antenna with liquid metal tuning slots is also presented, which successfully minimized the skin residues. Measurement has been performed with good agreement to the simulations. We believe that this design and prototype strategy can be applied to other potential topologies with various reconfigurable functionalities.