High-quality flexible antenna fabricated by ion-exchange technique

In this work, low-cost ion exchange technique coupled with printed-mask method has successfully been applied on the fabrication of high-quality flexible antennas. Nano-silver particles are chosen as conductive material of the CPW-fed antenna. The structure of the antennas is well-defined by the inkjet printing method. The experimental results indicate that a compact, smooth and highly-defined silver pattern is formed on the PI film with thickness of 800 nm, particle size of 50 nm and sheet resistance of 2.34 Omega/sq. A peak gain of 42.68 dB at resonant frequency 2.4 GHz nicely accords with the simulated result by ANSYS Electronics, demonstrating that the desired impedance matching can be realized. Moreover, the PI-based antenna shows excellent flexibility with a low sensibility to the bending tests. Therefore, the flexible patterned antenna by ion exchange technique and printed mask is suitable for flexible wireless electronics devices such as wearable devices, RFID labels and wireless mobile communication. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.