Screen-Printed 1 × 4 Quasi-Yagi-Uda Antenna Array on Highly Flexible Transparent Substrate for the Emerging 5G Applications
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In the Internet of Things (IoT) era, the demand for cost-effective, flexible, wearable antennas and circuits has been growing. Accordingly, screen-printing techniques are becoming more popular due to their lower costs and high-volume manufacturing. This paper presents and investigates a full-screen-printed 1 × 4 Quasi-Yagi-Uda antenna array on a high-transparency flexible Zeonor thin-film substrate for emerging 26 GHz band (24.25–27.55 GHz) 5G applications. As part of this study, screen-printing implementation rules are developed by properly managing ink layer thickness on a transparent flexible Zeonor thin-film dielectric to achieve a decent antenna array performance. In addition, a screen-printing repeatability study has been carried out through a performance comparison of 24 antenna array samples manufactured by our research partner from CEA-Liten Grenoble. Despite the challenging antenna array screen printing at higher frequencies, the measured results show a good antenna performance as anticipated from the traditional subtractive printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing process using standard substrates. It shows a wide-band matched input impedance from 22–28 GHz (i.e., 23% of relative band-width) and a maximum realized gain of 12.8 dB at 27 GHz.
Source: Electronics
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Institut des Matériaux, de Microélectronique et des Nanosciences de Provence, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Laboratoire d’Innovation pour les Technologies des Énergies Nouvelles et les nanomatériaux, CEA Grenoble
Language: English
Topic: Antenna Design and Analysis
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W4412480746