Physically Small Antennas with Superconducting and Multiferroic Composite Components for Directional Finding and Other Battlespace Applications

This Phase II effort proposes to design and develop a physically small patch and loop antenna made with high temperature superconducting (HTS) and multiferroic composite (MFC) materials for high frequency (HF) and directional finding (DF) applications. These antennas will harness and demonstrate the use of cryogenically cooled superconductive Josephson Junction (JJ) technology. Several novel thin film process techniques will also be presented in the fabrication of raw materials for these antennas. The resulting antennas will be miniaturized, up to 100X less the size of a conventional antenna. Frequency tuning for this antenna system will be fast, down to the range of mini-seconds, or faster. Bandwidth of these antennas is wide, down to the 3MHz. range. The arrays of HTS components are extremely sensitive magnetometers and would provide increased output voltage and dynamic range. They would also mitigate the variation in critical junction currents. MFC materials would also make excellent small antennas as they provide the mechanical resonance that increase the cross coupling effect between ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. Antennas made from MFC material has an added desirable feature of tuning by voltage.