A frequency tunable resonator using liquid crystals on flexible substrates

Liquid crystals have already been widely used in reconfigurable microwave devices through external electrically controlled dielectric properties. The traditional method is to sandwich liquid crystals between two metal layers etched on hard substrates. However, this method of adding external electric fields tends to cause short-circuiting between the upper and lower electrodes of liquid crystals in the bending state for the case of electrodes on flexible substrates. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to realise a frequency tunable resonator using liquid crystal fabricated on flexible substrates. The resonator is composed of coplanar waveguide structures. Since the metal layers of the coplanar waveguide placed on the same horizontal plane do not touch each other when bending, it allows the controlled electric field direction to be parallel to the electrode layers. Liquid crystals are placed under the coplanar metals for the electric field control. In order to maximise tunability, the structural parameters of the proposed structure were analysed in detail. The test results agree with the theory and simulation to verify the reliability of this frequency tunable resonator. Furthermore, the test results also illustrate that the applied electric field method can achieve the frequency continuous electrically tunable function when the flexible resonator is bending.