Abstract
Printing technologies have emerged as a viable method for the fabrication of various electronic components, including sensors, actuators, energy harvesters, thin-film transistors and circuits, as well as antennas. However, printing processes have limitations in terms of surface roughness and thickness. Printing conductive structures on novel substrates, such as cellulose-based sustainable paper, also leads to further challenges linked to the high surface porosity and ink carrier absorption. In this work, the variability of paper-based printed antenna performance due to different printing processes, ink carrier absorption, and temperature are investigated. The resonance frequency and gain of different printed antennas (e.g., screen, inkjet, and dispense-printed) are compared in terms of surface roughness, thickness, and resonance frequency. Screen-printed antennas showed better performance compared to other printed antennas. The results show that the resonance frequency of antenna shifted 20 MHz, 30 MHz, and 50 MHz for screen-printed, dispense-printed, and inkjet-printed respectively, from the nominal 2.6 GHz. In the case of the inkjet-printed antenna, a clear effect of skin depth is observed, due to the 0.91 μm thickness. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the permittivity/dielectric constant of the paper substrate is significantly influenced by ink carrier absorption and temperature variance.