Dual-Band Elliptical Planar Conductive Polymer Antenna Printed on a Flexible Substrate

In this communication, a fully organic dual-band antenna is presented. It consists of a coplanar waveguide coupled to an elliptical monopole antenna designed on a kapton substrate. This antenna is fabricated from a process, based on the use of a conductive polymer (Polyaniline) doped with multiwall carbon nanotubes, that has been optimized for this application. The flexibility of both kapton substrate and doped conductive polymer gives the antenna the ability to be freely crumpled paving the way to body-worn high data rate communications at microwave frequencies. Applications in wireless networks can also be addressed by using this kind of antennas. In this study, a comparison between the performance of an antenna under bending conditions (using a three-dimensional support) and its uncrumpled version is presented. We evaluate the crumpling effect on the resonant frequency, the bandwidth and the radiation patterns. A good agreement is observed between measurements and simulations data, even when the antenna is crumpled.