Rethinking Figure-of-Merits of Liquid Crystals Shielded Coplanar Waveguide Phase Shifters at 60 GHz

The demand for reconfigurable millimetre-wave (mm-Wave) components based on highly anisotropic liquid crystals (LC) is higher than ever before the UK and worldwide. In this work, 60 GHz investigation a bespoke shielded coplanar waveguide (SCPW) phase shifter structure filled with 16 types of microwave-enabled nematic LCs respectively indicates that patterns device’s figure-of-merit (FoM, defined as ratio maximum differential shift to insertion loss) reshuffle from those characterised LC materials’ FoM (defined tunability dissipation factor). To be more specific, GT7-29001- MDA-03-2838-based shifters exhibit highest devices, outperforming GT5-28004 TUD-566 materials. Such mismatch between LC’s implies nonlinearly perturbed wave-occupied volume effect. Furthermore, relationship loss effective delay line length nonlinear, evidenced by measurement results two (0–π 0–2π, respectively). nonlinearities complicate established metrics potentially lead renewed interest in selection material synthesis optimise mmWave promote their technological exploitation phased array systems targeting demanding applications such inter-satellite links satellite internet.