Low-Cost Flexible Graphite Monopole Patch Antenna for Wireless Communication Applications

This research investigates a monopole patch antenna for Wi-Fi applications at 2.45 and 5.2 GHz, and WiMax at 3.5 GHz. A low-cost and flexible graphite sheet with good conductivity, base on graphite conductive powder and glue is used to create a radiator patch and ground plane. Instead of commercially available conductive inks or graphite sheets, we use our self-produced graphite liquid to create the graphite sheet because it is easy to produce and inexpensive. The antenna structure is formed using a low-cost and easy hand-screen printing approach that involved placing graphite liquid on a bendable polyester substrate. This research focuses on designing and developing a low-cost, thin, light, and flexible patch antenna for wireless communication and smart glass applications. The proposed antenna utilizes CST microwave software for simulations to improve the parameters before fabrication and measurement. The simulation and measurement results for the reflection coefficients at 2.45 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 5.20 GHz are reliable and cover the required resonance frequencies, antennas gain are 1.91, 1.98, and 1.87 dB, respectively. Additionally, the radiation patterns of both results are omnidirectional. In the experiments, bending the proposed patch antenna along with the cylinder with the radii of 60, 40, and 25 mm yielded the same measurement results as the unbent patch antenna.