title: Microfluidic serpentine antennas with designed mechanical tunability.
abstract: This paper describes the design and characterization of microfluidic serpentine antennas with reversible stretchability and designed mechanical frequency modulation (FM). The microfluidic antennas are designed based on the Poisson's ratio of the elastomer in which the liquid alloy antenna is embedded, to controllably decrease, stabilize or increase its resonance frequency when being stretched. Finite element modelling was used in combination with experimental verification to investigate the effects of substrate dimensions and antenna aspect ratios on the FM sensitivity to uniaxial stretching. It could be designed within the range of -1.2 to 0.6 GHz per 100% stretch. When the aspect ratio of the serpentine antenna is between 1.0 and 1.5, the resonance frequency is stable under stretching, bending, and twisting. The presented microfluidic serpentine antenna design could be utilized in the field of wireless mobile communication for the design of wearable electronics, with a stable resonance frequency under dynamic applied strain up to 50%.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China. yinzhp@mail.hust.edu.cn yahuang@hust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: YongAn
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Yezhou
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Huimin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Zhouping
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yin