Flexible and Stretchable Brush-Painted Wearable Antenna on a 3D Printed Substrate

Abstract

This letter presents the proof-of-concept of the fabrication and performance analysis of a flexible and stretchable wearable antenna on a three-dimensional (3-D) printed substrate. It presents the details of the 3-D printing of the substrate, brush-painting of the antenna, as well as the simulation and measurement results of the antenna. In addition, the bending test is done to check the limitation of the manufacturing method. The results show that the stretchable silver conductive paste achieves a 1.7 × 104 S/m conductivity. The fabricated antenna shows measured impedance bandwidth of 990 MHz (1.94-2.93 GHz) with a peak gain of -7.2 dB at 2.45 GHz. Moreover, the antenna shows excellent wireless performance even when bent. Based on the results, the presented approach can be used for the manufacturing of wearable antennas and wireless on-body applications.