Microfluidic Switches with Integrated Actuation for Mm-Wave Beam-Steering Arrays

Selectively metallized plates (SMPs) repositionable within microfluidic channels offer to realize reconfigurable RF devices with compact size, low-loss and high-power handling. Slow actuation speed and external micropumps currently constitute their major drawback. To address these issues, this paper for the first time introduces the concept of piezoelectric disk actuated microfluidically reconfigurable devices and applies it to mm-wave beam-steering applications. Specifically, SPST and SP4T switch designs operating at 30 GHz are summarized and experimentally verified. Subsequently, a compact 4-element 30 GHz antenna array design integrated with the SP4T switch is presented. The stand-alone SP4T switch is characterized to operate with <0.9 dB insertion loss and <18 dB isolation across 18 GHz of bandwidth. The 4-element antenna array incorporating this SP4T switch is expected to perform with 10.2 dBi realized gain at 30 GHz.