Vanadium Dioxide Based Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for 5G and Beyond Wireless Communication

A Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) can help establish a secondary Line of Sight (LOS) to maintain the communication link when a blockage occurs in the direct path between the transmitter and receiver, particularly at mm-wave and sub-THz frequency bands. Typically, the reconfiguration is achieved through commercial PIN diodes, due to which, RIS suffer from high switch costs and complex switch integration with the electromagnetic structures. In this talk, we propose Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) switches as a solution to both of the above-mentioned problems. We show a novel VO2 ink that has been prepared in-house and screen-printed switches, which are integrated with the resonator elements to demonstrate a fully printed RIS for the mm-wave 5G band.