The National Science Foundation Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems awarded Virginia Commonwealth University a $220,000 Project Grant under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program. The two-year award will support research into developing spintronic extreme sub-wavelength and super-gain active electronically scanned antennas enabled by phonon-magnon-plasmon-photon coupling. Specifically, the university will introduce surface plasmons into magnetostrictive nanomagnets on a piezoelectric substrate to study four-way coupling of phonons, plasmons, magnons and photons. This is expected to enhance the efficiency of converting phonons to plasmons to magnons to photons, thereby improving antenna properties such as gain and radiation efficiency beyond theoretical limits. Additionally, the research aims to exploit changes in antenna radiation patterns from varying the direction of surface acoustic wave propagation to implement an active electronically scanned antenna through electronic beam steering. The results of this work could enable new applications for miniaturized, energy-efficient implanted and wearable electronic devices.
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