Fundamental Performance of Liquid Crystal Millimeter-wave Phase Shifter Using Negative Dielectric Anisotropic Material

Negative-type liquid crystal material, which has an inverse dielectric anisotropy for the low frequency, is introduced on a microstripline for modulating its dielectric constant with low driving voltage and low power consumption. Since the molecular orientation response for the driving voltage is inverted in comparison with positive-type LC materials, the transmission MMW phase magnitude decreases with a voltage application. The inverted feature is useful for complementary operation of the LC phase shifters by combining with positive type LC phase shifter to construct phased array system.