Publication:

Reconfigurable millimeter-wave reflectarray based on low loss liquid crystals

This article reports on the development and evaluation of a reconfigurable millimeter-wave reflectarray (RA) based on liquid-crystal (LC) substrate operating in the D-band (105–125 GHz). The RA is composed of a high-impedance surface (HIS) with a meta-array of 33 × 29 patches on a 2-mm-thick quartz substrate, separated from the ground plane (GP) by a 40-µm-thick LC layer. A novel LC composition with low dielectric losses (<0.003) and high dielectric anisotropy (>1.3) has been developed for operation at millimeter waves. The results demonstrate a reflection phase tunability of 210◦ and low insertion losses of 2.5 dB. Furthermore, the device was demonstrated as a proof of concept for 1-D beam-steering applications, exhibiting an operational bandwidth of 12 GHz.