Screen-Printed Flexible Bandstop Filter on Polyethylene Terephthalate Substrate Based on Ag Nanoparticles

• Main Authors: Rajendra Dhakal, Younsu Jung, Hyejin Park, Gyoujin Cho, Nam Young Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2015-01-01
• Series: Journal of Nanomaterials
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/978562

We present a low-power, cost-effective, highly reproducible, and disposable bandstop filter by employing high-throughput screen-printing technology. We apply large-scale printing strategies using silver-nanoparticle-based ink for the metallization of conductive wires to fabricate a bandstop filter on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The filter exhibits an attenuation pole at 4.35 GHz with excellent in-and-out band characteristics. These characteristics reflect a rejection depth that is better than −25 dB with a return loss of −0.75 dB at the normal orientation of the PET substrate. In addition, the filter characteristics are observed at various bending angles (0°, 10°, and 20°) of the PET substrate with an excellent relative standard deviation of less than 0.5%. These results confirm the accuracy, reproducibility, and independence of the resonance frequency. This screen-printing technology for well-defined nanostructures is more favorable than other complex photolithographic processes because it overcomes signal losses due to uneven surface distributions and thereby reveals a homogeneous distribution. Moreover, the proposed methodology enables incremental steps in the process of producing highly flexible and cost-effective printed-electronic radio devices.