Packaging-in-Dielectric Liquid Patch Antenna

A liquid patch antenna fully packaging-in-dielectric is presented for the first time. The proposed liquid patch antenna mainly consists of three parts: dielectric hollow cavities, conductive liquid and an SMA connector. The dielectric hollow cavities are made by 3D printing technique in-one-go. There are two hollow cavities embedded in a T-shaped dielectric box, a rectangular cavity placed at the upper part acting as the radiating element, and a non-planar cavity with a central groove under the radiating element serving as the ground plane. The radiating element and ground plane are metallized by filling high-conductivity single-walled carbon nanotube paste. The proposed antenna is designed at 5.2 GHz. Preliminary results show that the liquid patch antenna produces a good impedance matching and acceptable radiation characteristics at the desired frequency. As a proof of concept demonstration, this work presents a novel method for designing RF devices combining 3D printing technique with conductive liquids. Furthermore, due to the fluidity of liquid conductive materials, it is easy to manipulate the antenna's radiation performances by adjusting the amount of conductive liquids.