Tunable liquid crystal frequency selective surface with the compact unit cell, large tuning range, and the passband of flat-top and sharp roll-off

Abstract In this paper, a design method for tunable liquid crystal (LC)-based frequency selective surface (FSS) with the compact unit cell, large tuning range, and the passband of flat-top and sharp roll-off is proposed. A very compact LC-based bandpass FSS unit cell with the dimension of 0.077 λ × 0.077 λ is designed based on a pair of planar vortex-shaped metallic structure with two large parallel patches, between which the LC is sandwiched. Results show that the central frequency of the FSS is tuned from 11.56 to 12.58 GHz, and the tuning range reaches up to 8.5%. In order to obtain the transmission characteristics of flat-top and sharp roll-off, a double-layer structure is proposed and combined with the LC-based FSS design. Theoretical analyses are conducted to declare the working principle of the double-layer LC-based FSS. A prototype sample for the double-layer LC-based FSS is designed and fabricated. Results show that the double-layer LC-based FSS structure achieves frequency selective characteristics with a flat-top passband of about 450 MHz and sharp roll-off for arbitrary LC states with −15 dB rectangle coefficient of 2.44 for arbitrary LC states. Moreover, stable frequency responses of the double-layer LC-based FSS under various incident angles from 0° to 45° are obtained for arbitrary LC states.