Liquid‐metal‐fluidically polarization reconfigurable microstrip patch antenna

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we propose a liquid‐metal‐fluidically polarization reconfigurable microstrip patch antenna. The edge‐truncated patch is designed to generate circular polarization (CP), and two microfluidic channels are designed for the polarization reconfigurability. Therefore, the polarization of the proposed antenna is switched to linear polarization (LP) from the CP when the liquid metal is injected on the microfluidic channels. The microfluidic channels are fabricated on the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material, and eutectic gallium‐indium (EGaIn) is used as the liquid metal. The performance of the proposed antenna is numerically and experimentally demonstrated. The measured 10‐dB impedance bandwidth is 1.579‐1.619 GHz and 1.563‐1.587 GHz for the CP and LP modes, respectively. At the CP mode, the measured axial ratio (AR) and RHCP gain at 1.595 GHz are 2.267 dB and 6.59 dBic, respectively. At the LP mode, the measured AR and peak gain at 1.585 GHz are 12.335 dB and 5.18 dBi, respectively.