We rely quite a bit on antennas throughout our daily lives, as much business is conducted through devices with antennas these days, including credit card readers, laptops, routers to name a few — and they’re essential to the routine of most people’s lives in some way or another. They have their limitations, as there’s that day when a signal seems almost impossible to find it’s of the highest priority.
But there’s good news, as things may be a little bit easier for us all in light of a recently published study in the Journal of Applied Physics, as a group of researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an antenna made from liquid metal, particularly gallium (pictured above). This antenna can shift around and change frequencies when necessary, boosting a signal, according to study co-author Michael Dickey who was quoted by Phys.Org as having said that “at least two times greater than systems using electronic switches”.
Our antenna prototype using liquid metal can tune over a range of at least two times greater than systems using electronic switches.
Mobile technology is getting smaller and more advanced with each generation. The study’s co-author Jacob Adams believes that this liquid antenna could reduce the amount of situations in which antennas require reconfiguration, as liquid metal antennas “yield a larger range of tuning than conventional reconfigurable antennas”.
(Liquid metal systems) yield a larger range of tuning than conventional reconfigurable antennas, and the same approach can be applied to other components such as tunable filters..
Not only do mobile phones, but also biomedical devices, long-range communication for the military and space programs, those Amazon drones that everyone talks about, even a pacemaker could benefit from a liquid antenna with double the range of the current generation of antenna technology. It’s exciting to see where this will end up in our technology.
Are you excited to see this new liquid antenna technology implemented into the wireless technology you use in your daily life?
