Efficiency of a Compact Elliptical Planar Ultra-Wideband Antenna Based on Conductive Polymers

Autor: Thomas Kaufmann, Akhilesh Verma, Van-Tan Truong, Bo Weng, Roderick Shepherd, Christophe Fumeaux
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Antennas and Propagation, Vol 2012 (2012)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1687-5869
1687-5877
DOI: 10.1155/2012/972696
Popis: A planar antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications covering the 3.1–10.6 GHz range has been designed as a test bed for efficiency measurements of antennas manufactured using polymer conductors. Two types of conductive polymers, PEDOT and PPy (polypyrrole), with very different thicknesses and conductivities have been selected as conductors for the radiating elements. A comparison between measured radiation patterns of the conductive polymers and a copper reference antenna allows to estimate the conductor losses of the two types of conductive polymers. For a 158 μm thick PPy polymer, an efficiency of almost 80% can be observed over the whole UWB spectrum. For a 7 μm thick PEDOT layer, an average efficiency of 26.6% demonstrates, considering the room for improvement, the potential of this type of versatile materials as flexible printable alternative to conductive metallic paints. The paper demonstrates that, even though the PEDOT conductivity is an order of magnitude larger than that of PPy, the thicker PPy layer leads to much higher efficiency over the whole UWB frequency range. This result highlights that high efficiency can be achieved not only through high conductivity, but also through a sufficiently thick layer of conductive polymers.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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