Millimeter‐wave planar antenna on flexible polyethylene terephthalate substrate with water base silver nanoparticles conductive ink

Abstract

A 60 GHz, mm-wave array antenna, mounted on a thin flexible polyethylene terephthalate substrate is presented. The proposed 16 3 8 microstrip series fed array antenna prototype used with laboratory made silver nanoparticles conductive ink used in inkjet technology. The main fabrication problem for this prototype is addressed via ink formulation for printing a homogeneous layer with an excellent electrical conductivity. In comparison to the previous millimeter-wave series feed structures, the proposed antenna feed network conductive traces 50% is reduced. Silver base conductive ink is prepared in the laboratory with a viscosity of 9-12 cP and a surface tension of 27-32 mN/m for use in Fujifilm DMP-2831 series. The realized design validate performances of 16-element linear series sub-array fed by a three-stage T-junction power-divider network that achieves a 24 dBi gain is presented.

Performance Enhancements of Fully Inkjet-Printing Technology for Antenna-in-Package and Substrate Integrated Waveguides

“…Among them, 3D printing shows the potential for facilitating spatial complex design [2], whereas inkjet-printing advances conventional printed circuit boards (PCBs) due to the directwrite feature, low fabrication cost, and the application of flexible, light, or environmental friendly substrates. Inkjet printing has served a wide range of EM applications, including antenna-in-package (AiP) applications [3], substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) circuits and antennas [4][5][6], flexible antennas [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] including origami [7][8][9][10][11] and wearable applications [12,17,21,24], radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags [25] and the chipless counterpart [26], and wireless sensors [27].…”

“…e third challenge is the development of flexible antenna arrays. Previously, several flexible substrates have been implemented, including paper [7][8][9][10][11], polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [12][13][14], polyimide (PI) [15][16][17], liquid crystal polymer (LCP) [18], FLGR02 [19], polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [20], polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [21], and leather [22]. e antenna configuration includes monopole [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], patch [14,18,20,21], dipole [15], inverted-F [16], quasi-Yagi [19], and slot [22].…”

“…Previously, several flexible substrates have been implemented, including paper [7][8][9][10][11], polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [12][13][14], polyimide (PI) [15][16][17], liquid crystal polymer (LCP) [18], FLGR02 [19], polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [20], polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [21], and leather [22]. e antenna configuration includes monopole [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], patch [14,18,20,21], dipole [15], inverted-F [16], quasi-Yagi [19], and slot [22]. Most of the antenna is a single element [7-13, 15-17, 19-22]; however, relatively few studies propose inkjet-printed flexible antenna arrays [14,18,[33][34][35]; and these antenna arrays have not been tested over folding angles.…”

Terahertz Antenna based on Graphene for Wearable Applications

“…The reduction of skin depth and conductivity of copper metal at THz frequency lead to a high propagation loss and consequently reduce the radiation efficiency. Owing to support of low loss plasmonic resonance at THz frequencies, the usage of graphene for THz antenna application has recently been explored [4]. In related work, graphene with only a two-dimensional carbon material has remarkable mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties with the advantage of supporting surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) at terahertz frequencies.…”

Terahertz antenna design for wearable applications

“…By moving up in the frequency, the device physics changes drastically and the approach of using a metal based antenna has several limitations, chief among them is the low mobility of electrons in the nano-scale metallic structures. This results in the antennas being highly lossy at the resonant frequencies, which would result in high attenuation and subsequently, poor ef iciency of the overall sys-tem [6]. To address this lossy behaviour, meta-material based nano-structures have emerged as attractive solutions [7].…”