PDMS-Embedded Conductive Fabric: A Simple Solution for Fabricating PDMS-Based Wearable Antennas with Robust Performance

A new and simple fabrication method to realize robust flexible wearable antennas by combining conductive fabric and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is proposed. The conductive fabric acts as the conductive part of the antenna, while PDMS acts as the substrate as well as the encapsulation layers. The method takes advantage of the porous structure of the conductive fabric and the initial liquid form of PDMS to attain a significantly strong integration between the two, leading to a robust PDMS-based wearable antenna. A number of patch antennas have been designed, fabricated, and tested to validate the proposed concept and the results are presented, showing robust performance. The fabricated prototypes have a resonance frequency approximately at 2.46 GHz with a 10 dB return-loss bandwidth ranging from 3.3 to 5.7%.