No Arabic abstract
Due to the applications in meteorological broadcasts, radio navigation and underwater communications, low-frequency(LF) receiving antennas have been actively studied. However, because the frequency range of LF antenna is 30kHz to 300kHz, its electromagnetic wavelength is 1km to 10km, which makes LF electromagnetic antennas difficult to be implemented in miniaturized or portable devices. This article presents a miniaturized LF magnetoelectric(ME) receiving antenna with an integrated DC magnetic bias. The antenna is based on the magnetoelectric effect and operates by resonance at its mechanical resonant frequency. Thus, compared with traditional LF wire antennas, the dimension of ME antenna is reduced significantly. Compared with prior art of ME antennas which do not have DC magnetic bias, higher performance can be achieved by integrating the miniaturized DC magnetic bias. Compared with prior art of an ME antenna with bulky external DC magnetic bias, the ME antenna with an integrated DC magnetic bias significantly reduce its dimension. Magnetostrictive TbDyFe2(Terfenol-D) and piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate(PZT) thin films are bonded together to form the 38x12x5.8mm3 ME receiving antenna. Four 10x10x10mm3 Rb magnets are implemented to provide an optimal DC bias for the antenna. A maximum operation distance of 2.5m is demonstrated with the DC magnetic field bias, 2.27 times of the maximum operation distance of the antenna without DC magnet field bias. The efficiency, gain and quality factor the ME receiving antenna is also characterized. The miniaturized LF ME antenna could have potential applications in portable electronics, internet of things and underwater communications.
Low frequency communication systems offer significant potential in portable electronics and internet of things (IoT) applications due to the low propagation loss and long transmission range. However, because the dimension of electrical antenna is comparable to one quarter wavelength of the electromagnetic wave that it transmits and receives, currently a gap exists between LF communication systems and IoT, as IoT generally implement miniaturized electrical antennas with a small wavelength at a high frequency while traditional LF electrical antennas are too bulky. In this paper, we present an LF magnetoelectric mechanical transmitting and receiving antenna pair to significantly miniaturize the dimension of LF antennas. As the operation principle of the magnetoelectric mechanical antenna pair is based on mechanical resonance, its dimension is reduced by four orders of magnitude compared with an electrical antenna counterpart. The transmitting and receiving antennas are the same in structure and dimensions: they are both composed of magnetostrictive Terfenol-D and piezoelectric PZT laminate, and their dimensions are both 38x12x8.2mm3. Both the transmitting and receiving antennas are integrated with DC magnetic bias to improve its performance. Antenna pair performance measurement demonstrates that a maximum operation distance of 9m is demonstrated with DC magnetic bias, while maximum operation distance without DC magnetic bias is 4m, which is reduced by 56%. The LF magnetoelectric mechanical antenna pair may be a promising candidate for the portable electronics and IoT applications.
Integrated-photonics microchips now enable a range of advanced functionalities for high-coherence applications such as data transmission, highly optimized physical sensors, and harnessing quantum states, but with cost, efficiency, and portability much beyond tabletop experiments. Through high-volume semiconductor processing built around advanced materials there exists an opportunity for integrated devices to impact applications cutting across disciplines of basic science and technology. Here we show how to synthesize the absolute frequency of a lightwave signal, using integrated photonics to implement lasers, system interconnects, and nonlinear frequency comb generation. The laser frequency output of our synthesizer is programmed by a microwave clock across 4 THz near 1550 nm with 1 Hz resolution and traceability to the SI second. This is accomplished with a heterogeneously integrated III/V-Si tunable laser, which is guided by dual dissipative-Kerr-soliton frequency combs fabricated on silicon chips. Through out-of-loop measurements of the phase-coherent, microwave-to-optical link, we verify that the fractional-frequency instability of the integrated photonics synthesizer matches the $7.0*10^{-13}$ reference-clock instability for a 1 second acquisition, and constrain any synthesis error to $7.7*10^{-15}$ while stepping the synthesizer across the telecommunication C band. Any application of an optical frequency source would be enabled by the precision optical synthesis presented here. Building on the ubiquitous capability in the microwave domain, our results demonstrate a first path to synthesis with integrated photonics, leveraging low-cost, low-power, and compact features that will be critical for its widespread use.
Electro-optic phase modulators are critical components in modern communication, microwave photonic, and quantum photonic systems. Important for these applications is to achieve modulators with low half-wave voltage at high frequencies. Here we demonstrate an integrated phase modulator, based on a thin-film lithium niobate platform, that simultaneously features small on-chip loss (~ 1 dB) and low half-wave voltage over a large spectral range (3.5 - 4.5 V at 5 - 40 GHz). By driving the modulator with a strong 30-GHz microwave signal corresponding to around four half-wave voltages, we generate an optical frequency comb consisting of over 40 sidebands spanning 10 nm in the telecom L-band. The high electro-optic performance combined with the high RF power-handling ability (3.1 W) of our integrated phase modulator are crucial for future photonics and microwave systems.
Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications, including soft robotics, morphing structures, and biomedical devices. Despite recent progress, it remains challenging to achieve multiple shape manipulations in one material system. Here, we report a novel magnetic shape memory polymer composite to achieve this. The composite consists of two types of magnetic particles in an amorphous shape memory polymer matrix. The matrix softens via magnetic inductive heating of low-coercivity particles, and high-remanence particles with reprogrammable magnetization profiles drive the rapid and reversible shape change under actuation magnetic fields. Once cooled, the actuated shape can be locked. Additionally, varying the particle loadings for heating enables sequential actuation. The integrated multifunctional shape manipulations are further exploited for applications including soft magnetic grippers with large grabbing force, sequential logic for computing, and reconfigurable antennas. Keyword: shape memory polymers, soft active materials, magnetic soft material, soft robotics, soft material computing
Inducing a large refractive-index change is the holy grail of reconfigurable photonic structures, a goal that has long been the driving force behind the discovery of new optical material platforms. Recently, the unprecedentedly large refractive-index contrast between the amorphous and crystalline states of Ge-Sb-Te (GST)-based phase-change materials (PCMs) has attracted tremendous attention for reconfigurable integrated nanophotonics. Here, we introduce a microheater platform that employs optically transparent and electrically conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO) bridges for the fast and reversible electrical switching of the GST phase between crystalline and amorphous states. By the proper assignment of electrical pulses applied to the ITO microheater, we show that our platform allows for the registration of virtually any intermediate crystalline state into the GST film integrated on the top of the designed microheaters. More importantly, we demonstrate the full reversibility of the GST phase between amorphous and crystalline states. To show the feasibility of using this hybrid GST/ITO platform for miniaturized integrated nanophotonic structures, we integrate our designed microheaters into the arms of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to realize electrically reconfigurable optical phase shifters with orders of magnitude smaller footprints compared to existing integrated photonic architectures. We show that the phase of optical signals can be gradually shifted in multiple intermediate states using a structure that can potentially be smaller than a single wavelength. We believe that our study showcases the possibility of forming a whole new class of miniaturized reconfigurable integrated nanophotonics using beyond-binary reconfiguration of optical functionalities in hybrid PCM-photonic devices.