Electromagnetics and Photonics Commons^™

Reconfigurable Antennas Using Liquid Crystalline Elastomers, John Gibson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates the design of reversibly self-morphing novel liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) antennas that can dynamically change electromagnetic performance in response to temperature. This change in performance can be achieved by programming the shape change of stimuli-responsive (i.e., temperature-responsive) LCEs, and using these materials as substrates for reconfigurable antennas. Existing reconfigurable antennas rely on external circuitry such as Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) switches, pin diodes, and shape memory alloys (SMAs) to reconfigure their performance. Antennas using MEMS or diodes exhibit low efficiency due to the losses from these components. Also, antennas based on SMAs can change their performance only once as …