Inkjet Printing of a 20 GHZ Coplanar Waveguide Monopole Antenna Using Copper Oxide Nanoparticles on Flexible Substrates: Effect of Drop Spacing on Antenna Performance

Abstract

Abstract-Coplanar monopole antennas printed using copper oxide nanoparticles on flexible substrates are characterized in order to study the effect of the ink drop spacing on the antenna parameters. Polyethylene Terephthalate and Epson paper were the chosen flexible substrates, and the antennas were designed to operate at 20 GHz. A maximum conductivity of 2.8 × 10 7 Ω −1 m −1 was obtained for the films printed on Polyethylene Terephthalate using a drop spacing of 20 µm. The corresponding antenna achieved a gain and an efficiency of 1.82 dB and 97.6%, respectively. Experiments showed that smaller drop spacings lead to bulging of the printed lines while the antenna performance worsens for longer ones. At the same drop spacing, antennas printed on Epson paper substrate showed a −10 dB return loss bandwidth which extended from 17.9 GHz to 23.3 GHz, leading to a fractional bandwidth of 26.0%.

Flexible Antennas: A Review

“…Many other polymer-based flexible UWB antennas were reported in the literature. These include liquid crystal polymer [ 158 , 159 , 160 , 161 ], polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [ 162 , 163 , 164 ], graphene-assembled film [ 165 ], artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) [ 166 , 167 , 168 , 169 , 170 ], PET [ 171 , 172 , 173 ], paper [ 174 ], and polyamide [ 175 , 176 , 177 ].…”

“…A polymer-based substrate is an excellent option to solve these problems. For example, an earlier report [ 176 ] studied a compact polyimide-based antenna where Kapton polyimide film was used because of its low loss tangent (tan δ = 0.002) for broadband frequency operation with physical and chemical flexibility. This substrate had a temperature rating up to 400 °C and tensile strength of 165 MPa at 73 °F that confirms the robustness of the Kapton polyimide film.…”