Novel stretchable electrically conductive composites for tunable RF devices

Author

Cai, Fan ; Li, Zhuo ; Agar, Joshua C. ; Wong, C.P. ; Papapolymerou, John

Author_Institution

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 85 Fifth Street NW, Atlanta, 30308, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

17-22 June 2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

Stretchable, flexible and tunable RF devices that are fabricated with Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) Electrically Conductive Composites (ECC) are presented. Using this composite material allows mechanical modulation of the device dimensions resulting in tuning of its frequency response. A planar loop antenna and a 5th order stepped impedance low pass filter operating around 1.5 GHz with tunability greater than 15% are shown. The ECC can reach an electrical resistivity as low as 10⁻⁴ Ω. cm, which is close to a metal resistivity. The materials are also ultra-low cost for massive fabrication. This technology opens the door for tunable RF devices on flexible and curvilinear packages.

Keywords

Antenna measurements; Antenna radiation patterns; Low pass filters; Materials; Radio frequency; Resonant frequency; Flexible; Frequency tunable; Loop antenna; Reconfigurable RF devices; Stepped impedance low pass filter; Stretchable;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2012 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Montreal, QC, Canada

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1085-7

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2012.6259638

Filename

6259638