A novel investigation on printed stretchable WLAN antennas

In this paper an investigation on the realizability of the fully printed stretchable antennas has been reported. A novel stretchable conductive ink has been developed and utilized in the printing process. A conductivity of 849 S/cm and stretchability up to 300 % is achieved for the ink. The functionality of the ink at the WLAN band is tested by measuring two bowtie slot and patch antennas. The resonance frequency of the patch antenna shifts from 5.7 GHz to 3.5 GHz by stretching its longitudinal length to 65 % more than its original dimension. It is also feasible to stretch the bowtie slot up to 110 % more than its initial length while its resonance frequency moved from 5.2 GHz to 2.6 GHz. The agreement between the simulation and measurement results show that the proposed ink is very useful for the fabrication of the stretchable RF/Microwave circuits and antennas.