DESIGN OF A CONFORMAL MONOPOLE ANTENNA ON A PAPER SUBSTRATE USING THE PROPERTIES OF GRAPHENE- BASED CONDUCTORS

摘要

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 graphenebased conductor, the copper conductors in a well-known micro-strip transmission line (TL) and micro-stripantenna 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 sigma = 1.94 x 10(5) S/m for a 25 mm 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 mm 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. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.