SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have devised a method for using an origami-based structure to create radio frequency filters that have adjustable dimensions, enabling the devices to change which signals they block throughout a large range of frequencies.

The new approach to creating these tunable filters could have a variety of uses, from antenna systems capable of adapting in real-time to ambient conditions to the next generation of electromagnetic cloaking systems that could be reconfigured on the fly to reflect or absorb different frequencies.

The team focused on one particular pattern of origami, called Miura-Ori, which has the ability to expand and contract like an accordion.

"The Miura-Ori pattern has an infinite number of possible positions along its range of extension from fully compressed to fully expanded," said Glaucio Paulino, the Raymond Allen Jones Chair of Engineering and a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "A spatial filter made in this fashion can achieve similar versatility, changing which frequency it blocks as the filter is compressed or expanded."

Source: Shape-shifting origami could help antenna systems adapt on the fly

Continuous-range tunable multi-layer frequency selective surfaces using origami and inkjet-printing (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1812486115) (DX)

Original Submission