TY - JOUR
T1 - Strain-Insensitive Hierarchically Structured Stretchable Microstrip Antennas for Robust Wireless Communication
AU - Zhu, Jia
AU - Zhang, Senhao
AU - Yi, Ning
AU - Song, Chaoyun
AU - Qiu, Donghai
AU - Hu, Zhihui
AU - Li, Bowen
AU - Xing, Chenghao
AU - Yang, Hongbo
AU - Wang, Qing
AU - Cheng, Huanyu
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was in part supported by the International Partnership Program of Chinese Academy of Science (Grant No.154232KYSB20200016), the Suzhou Science and Technology Support Project (Grant No. SYG201905), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFC2007400). H.C. acknowledges the supports provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Grant No. ECCS-1933072), the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R61HL154215, and Penn State University. The partial support from the Center for Biodevices, the College of Engineering, and the Center for Security Research and Education at Penn State is also acknowledged.The use of the RF characterization facility provided by Prof. Mehdi Kiani at Penn State University was also acknowledged. Computations for this research were performed on the Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences’ Roar supercomputer. J.Z. would like to acknowledge the Leighton Riess Graduate Fellowship and Diefenderfer Graduate Fellowship in Engineering from Penn State University. J.Z. would also like to thank helpful discussions with Prof. Michael Lanagan, Prof. Mark Horn, Prof. Xin Ning, Prof. Jian Hsu, and Xianzhe Zhang. S.Z. would like to acknowledge Zhisen Wang, Kun Huang, Benkun Bao, Yingying Zhang, and Qi Lu’s help in the design and fabrication of stretcher and wireless communication measurements.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - As the key component of wireless data transmission and powering, stretchable antennas play an indispensable role in flexible/stretchable electronics. However, they often suffer from frequency detuning upon mechanical deformations; thus, their applications are limited to wireless sensing with wireless transmission capabilities remaining elusive. Here, a hierarchically structured stretchable microstrip antenna with meshed patterns arranged in an arched shape showcases tunable resonance frequency upon deformations with improved overall stretchability. The almost unchanged resonance frequency during deformations enables robust on-body wireless communication and RF energy harvesting, whereas the rapid changing resonance frequency with deformations allows for wireless sensing. The proposed stretchable microstrip antenna was demonstrated to communicate wirelessly with a transmitter (input power of − 3 dBm) efficiently (i.e., the receiving power higher than − 100 dBm over a distance of 100 m) on human bodies even upon 25% stretching. The flexibility in structural engineering combined with the coupled mechanical–electromagnetic simulations, provides a versatile engineering toolkit to design stretchable microstrip antennas and other potential wireless devices for stretchable electronics.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]
AB - As the key component of wireless data transmission and powering, stretchable antennas play an indispensable role in flexible/stretchable electronics. However, they often suffer from frequency detuning upon mechanical deformations; thus, their applications are limited to wireless sensing with wireless transmission capabilities remaining elusive. Here, a hierarchically structured stretchable microstrip antenna with meshed patterns arranged in an arched shape showcases tunable resonance frequency upon deformations with improved overall stretchability. The almost unchanged resonance frequency during deformations enables robust on-body wireless communication and RF energy harvesting, whereas the rapid changing resonance frequency with deformations allows for wireless sensing. The proposed stretchable microstrip antenna was demonstrated to communicate wirelessly with a transmitter (input power of − 3 dBm) efficiently (i.e., the receiving power higher than − 100 dBm over a distance of 100 m) on human bodies even upon 25% stretching. The flexibility in structural engineering combined with the coupled mechanical–electromagnetic simulations, provides a versatile engineering toolkit to design stretchable microstrip antennas and other potential wireless devices for stretchable electronics.[Figure not available: see fulltext.]
KW - RF energy harvesting
KW - Strain-insensitive resonance frequency
KW - Stretchable microstrip antennas
KW - Wearable and bio-integrated electronics
KW - Wireless communication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104059423&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40820-021-00631-5
DO - 10.1007/s40820-021-00631-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 34138356
AN - SCOPUS:85104059423
SN - 2311-6706
VL - 13
JO - Nano-Micro Letters
JF - Nano-Micro Letters
IS - 1
M1 - 108
ER -