Compact Polyimide-Based Antennas for Flexible Displays

Abstract

In this paper, we present two compact ultra thin and flexible printed monopole antennas intended for integration with flexible displays, such as flexible organic light-emission displays (FOLEDs) and active matrix electro-phoretic displays (AM-EPDs). The proposed antennas are designed to provide Wireless local area network (WLAN) and Bluetooth connectivity for flexible displays. The first design is a dual band antenna operating at 2.45 GHz and 5.2 GHz while the second is a single band antenna operating at 2.4 GHz. Both antennas were printed on a Kapton polyimide-based substrate with dimensions (35 mm×25 mm) and (26.5 mm×25 mm) for the dual and single band respectively. Antenna properties, such as gain, far-field radiation patterns, scattering parameter <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</sub> are provided. Moreover, the effect of folding/bending was performed experimentally on both designs to study its influence on the antennas performance. The proposed compact, thin and flexible designs along with antennas characteristics are perfectly suitable for integration into flexible displays for WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity.