Metamaterial tunable filter with liquid metal

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate a metamaterial tunable filter with liquid metal, which can be tuned by adjusting the size and position of the air gap within the liquid metal. In experiment, it measures a 2.3 GHz tuning range for the tunable metmaterial unit with the working wavelength of 8.9 GHz. The tuning of 5 × 5 unit array is also demonstrated. Different from traditional metamaterials [1, 2], the metal patterns of the tunable metamaterial filter are liquid state which can be reshaped once fabricated. The liquid state metal pattern not only advances in flexible tuning method, but also results in large tuning range for vast applications, such as tunable filter, accelerometer and optical switch.