Electric field oriented deposition manufacturing of low loss, high gain flexible transparent antenna utilizing the skin effect

Abstract Flexible transparent antennas (FTAs) are widely used in wireless transmission fields, and their technological iterations are accelerating. However, the high losses caused by materials and structures limit the development of FTAs with both high light transmission and high gain, and the rapid iteration rate demands greater process flexibility, which makes it difficult for existing technologies to achieve both demands. Here, we design a novel shell-core structure composite metal mesh (CMM) FTA to achieve extremely low skin depth loss and ohmic loss using skin effect and report a novel hybrid additive manufacturing method based on electric field oriented deposition to achieve efficient and flexible manufacturing of the unique Ag/Cu core-shell structure CMM FTA. The typical sample has a light transmittance of 80% (including substrate) when the sheet resistance is 0.29 Ω·sq⁻¹, and has excellent bending and torsion resistance. The peak gain in the working band is as high as 5.22 dB, and the efficiency is 80%, which is close to the performance of the opaque Cu patch antenna. It also realizes smooth and stable real-time wireless transmission under bending and long-distance conditions. This method addresses the shortcomings of FTAs, namely their high cost, low manufacturing efficiency, and low performance, especially in the rapid iterative development of antennas.