Microfluidic tunable metamaterial for gigahertz filter array

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate a metamaterial tunable filter with liquid metal, which can be tuned by changing the air pressure within the channels. In experiment, it measures a 3.3-GHz tuning range for the tunable metmaterial unit with the working wavelength of 11.27 GHz. The tuning of 9 × 9 unit array is demonstrated. Different from traditional metamaterials, the metal patterns of the tunable metamaterial filter are liquid state which can be reshaped once fabricated. The liquid state metal pattern not only advances in flexible tuning method, but also results in large tuning range for vast applications, such as tunable filter, accelerometer and optical switch.