Development of Low Cost, Wireless, Inkjet Printed Microfluidic RF Systems and Devices for Sensing or Tunable Electronics

In this paper, a review of recent improvements on inkjet-printed microfluidic-based tunable/sensing RF systems is reported. The devices, such as Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) passive wireless tags, coplanar patch antennas, bandstop filters, and loop antennas, are all fabricated by combining the inkjet printing technology on photographic paper for metallization and bonding layers, and laser etching for cavities and channels manufacturing. A novelty is also introduced for the loop antennas where the photographic paper is replaced with a polymer based substrate [i.e., (Poly(methyl-methacrylate))], to reduce the substrate losses for the RF part and solve the issue of paper hydrophylia. Along this paper an evolution toward higher working frequencies and higher detecting performance is shown, demonstrating a sensitivity up to 0.5%/ε
_r
with at most 6 μL of liquid in the channel.