Inkjet Printing of Paper-Based Wideband and High Gain Antennas

Abstract

This thesis represents a major contribution to wideband and high gain inkjet-printed antennas on paper. This work includes the complete characterization of the inkjet printing process for passive microwave devices on paper substrate as well as several ultra-wideband and high gain antenna designs. The characterization work includes the electrical characterization of the permittivity and loss tangent for paper substrate through 10 GHz, ink conductivity data for variable sintering conditions, and minimum feature sizes obtainable by today’s current inkjet processes for metallic nanoparticles. For the first time ever, inkjet-printed antennas are demonstrated that operate over the entire UWB band and demonstrate gains up to 8dB. This work also presents the first fractal-based inkjet-printed antennas with enhanced bandwidth and reduced production costs, and a novel slow wave log periodic dipole array which shows minimizations of 20% in width over conventional log periodic antennas.