Premium
Design of a conformal monopole antenna on a paper substrate using the properties of graphene‐based conductors
Author(s) -
Sajal Sayeed,
Braaten Benjamin D.,
Tolstedt Travis,
Asif Sajid,
Schroeder Mark J.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.30524
Subject(s) - electrical conductor , graphene , materials science , conductor , antenna (radio) , conformal map , monopole antenna , optoelectronics , dipole antenna , conductivity , electronic engineering , electrical engineering , nanotechnology , composite material , physics , engineering , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics
Two key components, among several, in the design of a conformal antenna are the planar conductors and the flexible substrates. In this paper, a new approach of using graphene‐based conductors instead of copper conductors in the design of a conformal antenna is presented. To determine the conductivity properties of the graphene‐based conductor, the copper conductors in a well‐known micro‐strip transmission line (TL) and micro‐strip antenna were replaced with the graphene‐based conductors and were analytically evaluated, simulated in a full‐wave simulation software and experimentally tested. Overall, it was shown that these graphene‐based conductors have a conductivity that is high enough to design a useful micro‐strip TL and micro‐strip antenna. In particular, a conductivity of σ = 1.94 ×10 5S/m for a 25 µm thick graphene‐based conductor was determined from 100 MHz to 4.0 GHz. Finally, the conformity of the graphene‐based conductors was demonstrated using a mechanical test fixture and by designing a monopole antenna on a 100 µm thick paper substrate. In summary, the results in this paper show that the graphene‐based conductors provide an alternative to the potentially fragile copper conductors traditionally used to design conformal antennas. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:1279–1283, 2017