Stretchable antennas

Author

Liu, Qing ; Ford, Kenneth Lee ; Langley, Richard ; Robinson, Adam ; Lacour, Stephanie

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Electr. Eng., Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

fYear

2012

fDate

26-30 March 2012

Firstpage

168

Lastpage

171

Abstract

This paper describes the manufacture and characterization of elastic antennas that are reversibly deformable and stretchable. The evaporation technique of depositing nanoscale thin (50/100nm) Au film on elastomer Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has been developed for elastic antenna applications. A stretchable Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) based on the evaporation technology has been presented. The PIFA antenna can withstand 10% strain but gives a relatively poor efficiency. Another novel fabrication technology with comparatively thicker metal films has been developed. Stretchable metallic films can be produced by printing thick (200~400nm) silver films on PDMS. A dipole antenna is presented based on the printing technique and gives acceptable performance.

Keywords

deformation; dipole antennas; gold; metallic thin films; planar inverted-F antennas; vacuum deposition; Au; PDMS; PIFA; antenna efficiency; dipole antenna; elastic antenna characterization; elastomer polydimethylsiloxane; evaporation technique; fabrication technology; nanoscale thin film deposition; reversibly deformable antenna; reversibly stretchable antenna; stretchable metallic films; stretchable planar inverted-F antenna; thick silver film printing; Antenna radiation patterns; Dipole antennas; Films; Gold; Strain; Substrates; elastic antenna; elastomeric substrate; evaporation technology; printing technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), 2012 6th European Conference on

Conference_Location

Prague

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0918-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4577-0919-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EuCAP.2012.6206109

Filename

6206109