Tunable passive phase shifter for microwave applications using highly anisotropic liquid crystals

• Published in: 2004 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Vol. 2; pp. 1153 - 1156 Vol.2
• Main Authors: Muller, S., Scheele, P., Weil, C., Wittek, M., Hock, C., Jakoby, R.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway NJ IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Anisotropic magnetoresistance; Applied sciences; Circuit properties; Dielectrics; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Insertion loss; Liquid crystals; Microstrip; Microwave circuits, microwave integrated circuits, microwave transmission lines, submillimeter wave circuits; Nonlinear optics; Optical resonators; Oscillators, resonators, synthetizers; Phase shifters; Polyimides; Temperature; Tunable circuit; Microwave phase shifter; Resonator; Inverted microstrip line; Wide band; Anisotropy; Phase shift; Insertion loss; Liquid crystals; Cost lowering; Figure of merit; Room temperature
• ISBN: 0780383311; 9780780383319
• ISSN: 0149-645X
• DOI: 10.1109/MWSYM.2004.1339190

A tunable broadband inverted microstrip line phase shifter filled with Liquid Crystals (LCs) is investigated between 1.125 GHz and 35 GHz at room temperature. The effective dielectric anisotropy is tuned by a DC-voltage of up to 30 V. In addition to standard LCs like K15 (5CB), a novel highly anisotropic LC mixture is characterized by a resonator method at 8.5 GHz, showing a very high dielectric anisotropy /spl Delta/n of 0.32 for the novel mixture compared to 0.13 for K15. These LCs are filled into two inverted microstrip line phase shifter devices with different polyimide films and heights. With a physical length of 50 mm, the insertion losses are about 4 dB for the novel mixture compared to 6 dB for K15 at 24 GHz. A differential phase shift of 360/spl deg/ can be achieved at 30 GHz with the novel mixture. The figure-of-merit of the phase shifter exceeds 110/spl deg//dB for the novel mixture compared to 21/spl deg//dB for K15 at 24 GHz. To our knowledge, this is the best value above 20 GHz at room temperature demonstrated for a tunable phase shifter based on nonlinear dielectrics up to now. This substantial progress opens up totally new low-cost LC applications beyond optics.