Graphene Nanoflakes Printed Flexible Meandered-Line Dipole Antenna on Paper Substrate for Low-Cost RFID and Sensing Applications

Abstract

In this letter, a graphene nanoflakes printed antenna is presented. Graphene nanoflakes conductive ink has been screenprinted on paper substrate and compressed to achieve the conductivity of 0.43 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5</sup> S/m. Low-profile meandered-line dipole antenna has been fabricated as a proof of concept due to its electrically small size and simple structure. The maximum gain is measured to be -4 dBi, the -10-dB bandwidth ranges from 984 to 1052 MHz (6.67%), and the radiation pattern is verified as being typical radiation patterns of a dipole-type antenna. The radiation efficiency is 32%. The measurement results reveal that graphene nanoflakes printed antenna can provide practically acceptable return loss, gain, bandwidth, and radiation patterns for midand short-range RFID, and sensing applications. Furthermore, screenprinting technique employed in this work is of extremely low cost and capable of producing antennas in mass production.