Synthesis and characterization of Novel polymer ceramic nanocomposite Substrate for high frequency flexible Microstrip patch antenna

Abstract

In the era of wireless communication there has been an increasing usage of personal communication, broadcasting, navigational systems, defence equipments and smart devices. All these high frequency microwave systems use sensitive antennas for communication that operate at particular frequency bands. As the application of antenna increases, need for complex antenna designs with improved performance, flexible, wearable, power efficient and compatibility gains importance. More practical microwave devices are confined within 10GHz frequency range. And therefore a need for high frequency antennas with several other efficiencies has been researched. Microstrip patch antennas are a class of planar antennas used for their light weight, low profile, simple design and compatible with various devices. Yet the drawback of these antennas resides in their low bandwidth. Material scientists work on the development of new substrate materials for the performance oriented microstrip patch antennas. The consideration for developing substrate material includes its flexibility, complex permittivity, dimensional stability and the homogeneity in processing technology. The conventional substrates like epoxy, FR4, RT-Duroid do not provide much room for property modification. Therefore the advent of polymer ceramic nanocomposites offers great flexibility and performance enhancement by viably customizing the property of the material. The magneto dielectric materials have been validated in the past for the development of reduced size and high bandwidth antennas. The polymer nanocomposites are functionalized with the magneto-dielectric ceramics to develop flexible and performance oriented antennas. Bismuth ferrite based multiferroic ceramics have high dielectric constant, high dielectric losses, ferroelectric and weak ferromagnetic properties. The dielectric and magnetic properties of the bismuth ferrite ceramics can be improved by rare earth metal doping. However, the high dielectric loss of the ceramics prevents its application in antenna technology newline