Effect of silver nanoparticle ink drop spacing on the characteristics of coplanar waveguide monopole antennas printed on flexible substrates

Abstract

Inkjet printing is a low‐cost technique suitable to fabricate flexible electronic devices using solutions of conductive nanoparticles on any type of substrate without material waste as in conventional etching techniques. In this study, a low‐profile wideband coplanar waveguide‐fed monopole antenna operating at 20 GHz is designed and printed using silver nanoparticle ink on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and on Epson paper substrates. The effects of varying the drop spacing (DS) of the ink on the conductivity of the printed films as well as on the antenna parameters were fully investigated by numerical simulations and by measurements. A conductivity of 1.8 × 107 Ω−1 m−1 was obtained for the films printed on PET using a DS of 30 µm leading to superior antenna performance with an achieved gain and antenna radiation efficiency of 1.67 dB and 96%, respectively. In addition, the size reduction reached 99%. On the other hand, antennas on Epson paper substrate show an |S11| bandwidth <−10 dB extending from 17.18 up to 24.3 GHz, leading to a fractional bandwidth of 34.34%.

Printed Microwave Metamaterial-Antenna Circuitries on Nickel Oxide Polymerized Palm Fiber Substrates

“…SNPCI is printed with Ink-jet printing technology (IJPT) were recently applied to manufacture microwave devices due to their high resolution, low thermal process, very high processing speed, and the ability to print on flexible substrates 17 . DMP-2800 Dimatix FujiFilm printer is used to printout MTM and the dipoles structures on the prepared substrate, with 10 pl nominal drop re-filed cartridge.…”

“…A four-probe conductivity measurement technique is invoked to measure the electrical conductivity of the prepared samples 17 . The electrical conductivity measurement is performed using Keithley 224 programmable current source and a Keithley 617 programmable electrometer.…”

“…Therefore, the ability of creating adhesive substrates impacts efficiently the frame of this research. However, due to the mechanical difficulty of having a compacted hard reinforced composite fiber layer as a one piece, adding reactive materials such as polymers may effect on several parameters including the intrinsic properties matrix, melting temperature, and the strength of the fiber ligament 17 . There are several antenna parameters may rely on the method of reinforcing the fiber filling specially when mixed with other composites.…”

CPW-fed flexible monopole antenna with H and two concentric C slots on textile substrate, backed by EBG for WBAN

“…In the literature, different polymer materials have been used to design flexible antennas for WBAN. Mohassieb et al, presented the effects of silver nanoparticle ink drop spacing on the characteristics of coplanar wave guide monopole antennas printed on flexible substrate, flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is considered as the substrate material.…”

“…In the literature, different polymer materials have been used to design flexible antennas for WBAN. Mohassieb et al, presented the effects of silver nanoparticle ink drop spacing on the characteristics of coplanar wave guide monopole antennas printed on flexible substrate, flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is considered as the substrate material. Simorangkir et al proposed a method to realize robust flexible electronically tunable antennas using polymer embedded conductive fabric, the radiating patch is made with the conductive fabric, whereas the substrate is made with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer.…”