Design and simulation of tunable microwave capacitor based on microfluidic actuation

International audienceThis paper presents design and simulation of tunable microwave capacitor based on microfluidic actuation. The structure modeling shows an important variation of electric field and current distribution following the DI water displacement in microchannels. In addition, the capacitance value is comprised between Cmin = 0.11 pF and Cmax = 5.76 pF allowing a very wide variation that reaches Tr = 5136% at 4.5 GHz. Furthermore, the resonant frequency ranges from 5.67 GHz to 19.81 GHz and we obtain a broad band ability higher than 240%. The maximum quality factor value Qmax = 84.27 results when the capacitor is empty and degrades to Qmin = 3.99 when it is fully filled with DI water at 4.5 GHz