Inkjet-Printed Two-Dimensional Phased-Array Antenna on a Flexible Substrate

Abstract

In this letter, we present a two-dimensional 2-bit 4 × 4 phased-array antenna on a flexible Kapton substrate fabricated using inkjet printing. Printed carbon nanotube thin-film transistors (CNT-TFTs) form the switching elements in the phase-shifting network. A multilayer interconnection scheme has been utilized to fully package the subsystem and enable convenient access of the control lines to the 64 CNT-TFTs. By appropriately controlling the on and off states of the TFT switches using a computer mainframe, beam steering of a 5-GHz RF signal at four steering angles of θ = 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> , φ = 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> ; θ = 14.5 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> , φ = 0 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> ; θ = 20.7 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> , φ = -45 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> ; and θ = 34 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> , φ = -26.5 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> are experimentally demonstrated. The insertion loss and the power consumption by the switch array are measured to be 8.17 dB and 11.2 mW, respectively .