The meaningful discussions we shared on research work and life have indeed made my experience in graduate school more than enjoyable. In addition, I would like to thank other professionals and students who are involved in my research including Dr. Jim Huang from Hewlett Packard Enterprise as well as Sridhar Sivapurapu and Nahid Aslani Amoli from Dr. Swaminathan's group. Many thanks are due to my parents who always stood behind every critical decision I made. I would not have accomplished this milestone without their love, support, and trust. I would like to acknowledge that this material is based, in part, on research sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory under agreement number FA8650-15-2-5401, as conducted through the flexible hybrid electronics manufacturing innovation institute, NextFlex. ivTABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS xiv SUMMARY xvi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2. BACKGROUND AND LINTERATURE REVIEW 2.1 History of Conformal Antenna and Flexible Printed Antenna 2.2 Mechanical Testing of Flexible Printed Electronics 2.3 Antenna Performance Under Strain CHAPTER 3. OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE CHAPTER 4. ANTENNA DESIGN AND FABRICATION RESULTS 4.1 Fabrication Process 4.2 Antenna Design in HFSS 4.2.1 Layer Thickness 4.2.2 Material Electrical Properties 4.2.3 HFSS Simulation Setup and Results 4.3 Fabrication Results and Comparison to Simulation CHAPTER 5. MANDREL BENDING TEST AND RESULTS 5.1 Mandrel Bending Test Over Different Sizes of Mandrel 5.1.1 Experimental Setup and Procedure 5.1.2 Experimental Test Results 5.2 Cyclic Mandrel Bending Test over Mandrel Size of 0.625 in. Radius 5.2.1 Experimental Procedure and Results of Sample P1 5.2.2 Experimental Procedure and Results of Sample P2 CHAPTER 6. MECHANICAL FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF MANDREL BENDING TEST 6.1 Geometry Modeling 6.2 Material Modeling 6.2.1 Characterization of Printed Silver Ink's Property 6.2.2 Other Materials' Properties 6.3 Loading and Boundary Conditions v 6.4 Initial Meshing Details 6.5 Mesh Convergence and Simulation Results CHAPTER 7. BIAXIAL BENDING TEST AND RESULTS 7.1 Experimental Fixture Design and Setup 7.2 Experimental High-Frequency Measurement Results 7.3 SEM Images Results CHAPTER 8. MECHANICAL FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF THE BIAXIAL BENDING TEST 8.1 Loading and Boundary Conditions 8.2 Mesh Convergence and Simulation Results CHAPTER 9. Conductivity Change Impact on Patch Antenna's High-Frequency Electrical Behavior 9.1 Updated HFSS Model 9.2 Conductivity Impact on the S11 Response CHAPTER 10. Conclusion, Contributions, and Future Work 10.1 Conclusion 10.2 Contributions 10.3 Future Work REFERENCES CHAPTER 1.
High‐performance and low‐cost flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) are desirable for applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), wearable electronics, and flexible displays. However, design toolkit, design methodology, and compact models that play an essential role in designing complex FHE circuits and systems are still missing today. To fill this gap, here we report (a) the process design kit (PDK) dedicated to electronic design automation for FHE circuits and systems and (b) solution process–proven intellectual property (IP) blocks, which serves as a stepping stone for designing large‐scale flexible thin‐film transistor (TFT) circuits. The proposed FHE‐PDK is made compatible with modern electronics design tools for users to design, simulate, and verify physical design of flexible hybrid systems.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.