3-D Printed Microfluidics Channelizing Liquid Metal for Multipolarization Reconfigurable Extended E-Shaped Patch Antenna

In this article, we present a novel multipolarization reconfigurable extended E-shaped patch antenna with liquid metal (LM) tunable slots. The polarization reconfiguration is achieved by tuning and switching the slots with continuous movement of LM plugs in the 3-D printed microfluidic channels. The proposed antenna topology is reconfigurable among multipolorizations including dual circular polarizations (RHCP and LHCP) and linear polarizations with arbitrary orientation within the xy plane with a single feed. A thorough and comprehensive circuit model analysis for asymmetric E-shaped patch is presented. A prototype has been designed, fabricated, and assembled with an improved in-house developed process flow. The measurement results on constructed prototypes show good agreement to the full-wave simulation.