Continuous-range tunable multilayer frequency-selective surfaces using origami and inkjet printing

The tremendous increase in the number of components in typical electrical and communication modules requires low-cost, flexible and multifunctional sensing, energy harvesting, and communication modules that can readily reconfigure, depending on changes in their environment. Current subtractive manufacturing-based reconfigurable systems offer limited flexibility (limited finite number of discrete reconfiguration states) and have high fabrication cost and time requirements. Thus, this paper introduces an approach to solve the problem by combining additive manufacturing and origami principles to realize tunable electrical components that can be reconfigured over continuous-state ranges from folded (compact) to unfolded (large surface) configurations. Special “bridge-like” structures are introduced along the traces that increase their flexibility, thereby avoiding breakage during folding. These techniques allow creating truly flexible conductive traces that can maintain high conductivity even for large bending angles, further enhancing the states of reconfigurability. To demonstrate the idea, a Miura-Ori pattern is used to fabricate spatial filters—frequency-selective surfaces (FSSs) with dipole resonant elements placed along the fold lines. The electrical length of the dipole elements in these structures changes when the Miura-Ori is folded, which facilitates tunable frequency response for the proposed shape-reconfigurable FSS structure. Higher-order spatial filters are realized by creating multilayer Miura-FSS configurations, which further increase the overall bandwidth of the structure. Such multilayer Miura-FSS structures feature the unprecedented capability of on-the-fly reconfigurability to different specifications (multiple bands, broadband/narrowband bandwidth, wide angle of incidence rejection), requiring neither specialized substrates nor highly complex electronics, holding frames, or fabrication processes.