Screen-printed Flexible and Transparent Antenna

Abstract

Optically transparent antennas have attracted considerable attention in the past few decades due to potential applications in solar panels and wireless communications. However, the designs are typically based on transparent conductive oxides, which suffer from low transparency, high cost and poor flexibility. In this paper, an optically transparent, mechanically flexible monopole antenna is presented, which has been realized through screen-printing of silver nanowires (Ag NWs) in high efficiency. The proposed monopole antenna has been printed on a 50-µm-thick polyethylene terephthalate substrate. The total size of the antenna is 12×12 mm2, and the operating frequency covers Ku- and Ka-band (18-40 GHz), which makes the antenna suitable for mm-wave applications including 5G communication. The antenna demonstrates excellent stability over 100 bending cycles with a radius of 4 mm. More importantly, 89% transmittance has been achieved at a wavelength of 550 nm, which is better than transparent antennas in literature.