Flexible Liquid Crystal Polymer Substrate Research Articles

MEMS-based reconfigurable and flexible antenna for body-centric wearable applications

The current study presents an MEMS switche-based frequency reconfigurable antenna for conformal and wearable applications. This is a circular ring-shaped monopole antenna loaded with spokes attached to the circular ring and fed by co-planar waveguide feeding (CPW). The antenna is designed on the flexible Liquid crystal polymer substrate material with 40 × 28 × 0.1 mm3. The reconfigurability of the antenna was achieved by placing RF MEMS SP4 T (ADGM 1304) switches. The antenna has a dual-band with reconfigurability at 2.5 GHz (2.12–2.9 GHz) and 5.4 GHz (4.5–5.8 GHz). The measured results demonstrate the antenna operates at 1.73–3.2 GHz and 4.54–6.3 GHz with resonating frequencies of 2.5 and 5.6 GHz. When placed on the human body, the gain of the antenna variesg from 5.32 to 8.38 dBi for different reconfigurable conditions. SAR analysis results in between 0.15 W/Kg and 1.37 W/Kg for different switching conditions, and the simulation results match with the measurements.

A printed millimetre-wave modulator and antenna array for backscatter communications at gigabit data rates

Future devices for the Internet of Things will require communication systems that can deliver higher data rates at low power. Backscatter radio—in which wireless communication is achieved via reflection rather than radiation—is a low-complexity approach that requires a minimal number of active elements. However, it is typically limited to data rates of hundreds of megabits per second because of the low frequency bands used and the modulation techniques involved. Here we report a millimetre-wave modulator and antenna array for backscatter communications at gigabit data rates. This radiofrequency front-end consists of a microstrip patch antenna array and a single pseudomorphic high-electron-mobility transistor that supports a range of modulation formats including binary phase shift keying, quadrature phase shift keying and quadrature amplitude modulation. The circuit is additively manufactured with inkjet printing using silver nanoparticle inks on a flexible liquid-crystal polymer substrate. A millimetre-wave transceiver is also designed to capture and downconvert the backscattered signals and route them for digital signal processing. With the system, we demonstrate a bit rate of two gigabits per second of backscatter transmission at millimetre-wave frequencies of 24–28 GHz, and with a front-end energy consumption of 0.17 pJ per bit.

Radiation characteristics of a flexible micro-electro-mechanical system antenna on a liquid crystal polymer substrate

Liquid crystal polymers are flexible polymer materials that can be used as a substrate in flexible micro-electro-mechanical system antennas. Flexible liquid crystal polymer substrate antennae can satisfy the demand for wearable and conformal applications. In this study, a flexible micro-electro-mechanical system antenna based on a liquid crystal polymer substrate is presented with a central frequency of 14 GHz. The relationships between the electrical parameters and the curvature K are obtained in order to investigate the radiation characteristics of the bent antenna with 0.04 ≤ K ≤ 0.2. The analysis results show that the antenna with a liquid crystal polymer substrate demonstrates a good radiation performance in its bent state with 0.04 ≤ K ≤ 0.2, which provides a viable option for wearable and conformal applications.

Millimeter‐wave bandpass filter on LCP using CSRR‐loaded triangular‐shape quarter‐mode substrate integrated waveguide

ABSTRACTA millimeter‐wave two‐pole bandpass filter (BPF) with an asymmetrical frequency response is realized on a flexible liquid crystal polymer substrate for wearable/conformal wireless applications. The design uses the triangular‐shape quarter‐mode substrate integrated waveguide (QMSIW) cavity loaded with a complementary split‐ring resonator. The compact cavity shows a resonant mode below the quasi‐TE1,0,0.5 mode of an original QMSIW cavity, which indicates a further size reduction. In addition, its low quality factor (Q) is useful for BPFs with broad fractional bandwidth (FBW). A surface micromachined two‐pole Chebyshev BPF is realized for operation at 35 GHz with a 20 dB return loss FBW of 8% and an insertion loss of 1.7 dB. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:1782–1784, 2015

Flexible and Surface-Mountable Piezoelectric Sensor Arrays for Underwater Sensing in Marine Vehicles

In an effort to improve the situational awareness and obstacle avoidance of marine vehicles, we fabricate, package and characterize Pb (Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 thin-film piezoelectric pressure sensor arrays for passive fish-like underwater sensing. We use floating bottom electrode in designing the sensor which made the sensor able to detect very low frequency range (down to 0.1 Hz) in water. The proposed array of sensors is capable of locating underwater objects by transducing the pressure variations generated by the stimulus. The sensors are packaged into an array of 2 × 5 on a flexible liquid crystal polymer substrate patterned with gold interconnects. Experiments in this paper are divided into three main categories. First, in order to evaluate the effect of water on the sensor performance, resonant frequency, and quality factor changes in air and water are investigated theoretically and experimentally. Second, the ability of the array in locating a vibrating sphere (dipole) in water is illustrated through experiments. The sensors demonstrate a high resolution of 3 mms <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> in detecting in detecting oscillatory flow velocity in water. Third, “real-time” experiments are conducted in a swimming pool environment by surface mounting two arrays of sensors on the curved hull of a kayak vehicle. The arrays are self-powered and do not need any external power supply, to operate, which greatly benefits in eliminating the need of bulky power supplies on underwater vehicles.

Integration of thin film bulk acoustic resonators onto flexible liquid crystal polymer substrates

Thin film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs) have been directly integrated on liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrates for application to the field of flexible electronics. Particular developments required were chemo-mechanical polishing for LCP roughness reduction to enable growth of high quality ZnO films and a through substrate deep reactive ion etch process. Q values of up to 126 and 78 for series and parallel resonances combined with an electromechanical coefficient ( k t 2 ) ∼ 6.7% were achieved. Further device development is needed but this performance is already sufficient for some chemical/biological sensing applications.

Back-to-back tunable ferroelectric resonator filters on flexible organic substrates.

This paper presents the design and the fabrication of two low-loss X-band back-to-back tunable ferroelectric resonator filters on flexible liquid crystal polymer substrates using wire-bonded BST capacitors as analog tuning elements. The back-to-back topology consists of three resonators on both sides of the substrate coupled by apertures in their common ground plane, allowing the overall size of the filter to be reduced. BST varactors made on a sapphire substrate are easily diced and mounted on the polymer substrates to achieve the desired tuning. Both 3-pole tunable filters show a 1-dB bandwidth of 8 to 10%, low insertion loss (3.6 to 1.95 dB for the best one) with bias voltages from 0 to 35 V, a better compactness compared with classical tunable structures (reduced footprint area by 30% for the best filter) and a frequency tuning of about 11 to 13% at 8 GHz. The demonstrated feasibility opens interesting prospects for the fabrication of compact tunable filters with more resonators.

Back-to-back tunable ferroelectric resonator filters on flexible organic substrates

This paper presents the design and the fabrication of two low-loss X-band back-to-back tunable ferroelectric resonator filters on flexible liquid crystal polymer substrates using wire-bonded BST capacitors as analog tuning elements. The back-to-back topology consists of three resonators on both sides of the substrate coupled by apertures in their common ground plane, allowing the overall size of the filter to be reduced. BST varactors made on a sapphire substrate are easily diced and mounted on the polymer substrates to achieve the desired tuning. Both 3-pole tunable filters show a 1-dB bandwidth of 8 to 10%, low insertion loss (3.6 to 1.95 dB for the best one) with bias voltages from 0 to 35 V, a better compactness compared with classical tunable structures (reduced footprint area by 30% for the best filter) and a frequency tuning of about 11 to 13% at 8 GHz. The demonstrated feasibility opens interesting prospects for the fabrication of compact tunable filters with more resonators.

Reduced-size multilayer X-band filters with stacked resonators on a flexible organic substrate

This work presents the design of two four-pole, quasi-elliptic microwave bandpass filters with stacked open-loop resonators on an emerging low-loss organic dielectric material. Both filters are based on a multilayer microstrip structure that uses low-cost and flexible liquid crystal polymer substrates to produce a compact size. The first filter, which has a bandwidth of 17% at 9.3 GHz, was designed to control the high coupling strength between overlapped resonators without sacrificing its compact size. It has a measured 1.7 dB of insertion loss. The second filter uses the same topology, but its measured parameters include a bandwidth of 9% at 10.5 GHz and an insertion loss of 4.5 dB. To achieve the 9% bandwidth, two metallic patches were added between layers to limit the higher coupling between the overlapped resonators. Both bandpass filters have a footprint area reduction of at least 25% when compared to an equivalent single-layer, open-loop resonator filter.

Flip chip attachment on flexible LCP substrate using an ACF

In this study the reliability of a flip chip bonding process using anisotropic conductive adhesives (ACA) was evaluated. The flexible substrates used were made of liquid crystal polymer (LCP), which is an interesting new material having excellent properties for flexible printed circuit boards. The test samples were prepared using two different anisotropic conductive films (ACF) having the same fast-cure resin matrix, but different conductive particles. The reliability of the test samples was studied by accelerated environmental tests. In the constant humidity test the temperature was 85 °C and the relative humidity was 85%. The temperature cycling test was carried out between temperatures of −40 °C and 85 °C. To determine the exact time of a failure the resistance of each test sample was measured using continuous real-time measurement. A clear difference between the behaviour of the conductive particles was seen in the test. While the adhesive having polymer particles had only one failure during testing, the adhesive having nickel particles had a considerable number of failures in both tests. Cross sections of the samples were made to analyze the failure mechanisms.