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www.impactlab.net 2015 00479.txt.txt

#Tunable voltage-controlled liquid metal antenna North carolina State university (NCSU) researchers have created, using electrochemistry, a reconfigurable, voltage-controlled liquid metal antenna that may play a role in future mobile devices and the coming Internet of things. By placing a positive or negative electrical voltage across the interface between the liquid metal and an electrolyte, they found that they could cause the liquid metal to spread (flow into a capillary) or contract, changing its operating frequency and radiation pattern. sing a liquid metal such as eutectic gallium and indium that can change its shape allows us to modify antenna properties such as frequency more dramatically than is possible with a fixed conductor, explained Jacob Adams, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer engineering at NCSU and a co-author of an open-access paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. The positive voltage lectrochemically deposits an oxide on the surface of the metal that lowers the surface tension, while a negative voltage removes the oxide to increase the surface tension, Adams said. These differences in surface tension dictate which direction the metal will flow. This advance makes it possible to emove or regenerate enough of the xide skinwith an applied voltage to make the liquid metal flow into or out of the capillary. We call this lectrochemically controlled capillarity which is much like an electrochemical pump for the liquid metal, Adams noted. Although antenna properties can be reconfigured to some extent by using solid conductors with electronic switches, the liquid metal approach greatly increases the range over which the antenna operating frequency can be tuned. ur antenna prototype using liquid metal can tune over a range of at least two times greater than systems using electronic switches, he pointed out. Previous liquid-metal designs typically required external pumps that can be integrated easily into electronic systems. Extending frequencies for mobile devicesobile device sizes are continuing to shrink and the burgeoning Internet of things will likely create an enormous demand for small wireless systems, Adams said. nd as the number of services that a device must be capable of supporting grows, so too will the number of frequency bands over which the antenna and RF front-end must operate. This combination will create a real antenna design challenge for mobile systems because antenna size and operating bandwidth tend to be conflicting tradeoffs. his is why tunable antennas are highly desirable: they can be miniaturized and adapted to correct for near-field loading problems such as the iphone 4 well-publicized eath gripissue of dropped calls when by holding it by the bottom. Liquid metal systems ield a larger range of tuning than conventional reconfigurable antennas, and the same approach can be applied to other components such as tunable filters, Adams said. In the long term, Adams and colleagues hope to gain greater control of the shape of the liquid metal in two-dimensional surfaces to obtain nearly any desired antenna shape. his would enable enormous flexibility in the electromagnetic properties of the antenna and allow a single adaptive antenna to perform many functions, he added. Image and article via Kurzweila o

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