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Self-Healing Antennas - Forbes.com

published 268 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes ago posted by http://jonnyboats.wordpress.com/http://jonnyboats.wordpress.com/ 276 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes ago
Saturday, December 12, 2009 2:48:07 PM GMT Friday, December 04, 2009 12:38:30 PM GMT

Lazzi, chair of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah, and Dickey, a chemical engineer at North Carolina State University, have created an antenna made of a metal alloy that is liquid at room temperature. They inject the alloy into thin tubes called microchannels designed into whatever they want to hold the antenna.

"The wire itself is a liquid so its mechanical properties are defined by the encasing material, which could be lots of things--a rubber band, bathroom caulk," says Dickey. "Then the antenna is like the caulk or the rubber band, and it snaps back."

Because the signals that antennas pick up depend on their shape, this antenna can be tuned to a huge range of frequencies just by stretching it. The hope is this kind of flexible, tunable antenna could be used in flexible electronics, in biomedical devices, in military applications and as a sensor embedded in construction materials.

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tags: electronics

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