Knitting Antennas

Watch this video to see Columbia Engineers knit a blanket of sophisticated radio-frequency array antennas. The team is the first to use traditional flat-knitting techniques to fabricate flexible, lightweight metasurfaces that can easily be stowed and deployed for long-range communications.

“The float-jacquard knitting technique used for making our textile metasurfaces is exactly the same technique that my mother used to make sweaters for me. I still remember a purple sweater I wore as a kid that had a row of white cats across the chest; I remember that when I inspected the inner side of the sweater, I saw white parallel yarns – the floats,” said Nanfang Yu , associate professor of applied physics and applied mathematics.