Graphene Nanoflakes Printed Flexible Meandered-Line Dipole Antenna on Paper Substrate for Low-Cost RFID and Sensing Applications

In this letter, a graphene nanoflakes printed antenna is presented. Graphene nanoflakes conductive ink has been screen-printed on paper substrate and compressed to achieve the conductivity of $\text{0.43} \times {\text{10}^{\text{5}}} \hbox{\,S/m}$ . Low-profile meandered-line dipole antenna has been fabricated as a proof of concept due to its electrically small size and simple structure. The maximum gain is measured to be ${-}\hbox{4 dBi}$ , the ${-} \hbox{10-dB}$ bandwidth ranges from 984 to 1052 MHz (6.67%), and the radiation pattern is verified as being typical radiation patterns of a dipole-type antenna. The radiation efficiency is 32%. The measurement results reveal that graphene nanoflakes printed antenna can provide practically acceptable return loss, gain, bandwidth, and radiation patterns for mid- and short-range RFID, and sensing applications. Furthermore, screen-printing technique employed in this work is of extremely low cost and capable of producing antennas in mass production.