IJAP International Journal of Antennas and Propagation 1687-5877 1687-5869 Hindawi Publishing Corporation 10.1155/2015/845042 845042 Research Article Efficient Design of Flexible and Low Cost Paper-Based Inkjet-Printed Antenna Mansour A. M. amansour.ahmed@yahoo.com 1, 2 Shehata N. nader83@vt.edu 2, 3, 4 Hamza B. M. bassant.m.hamza@gmail.com 1, 2 Rizk M. R. M. mrm_rizk@mena.vt.edu 1, 2 Geng Junping 1 Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Engineering Alexandria University Alexandria 21544 Egypt alexu.edu.eg 2 Center of Smart Nanotechnology and Photonics (CSNP) SmartCI Research Center of Excellence Alexandria University Alexandria 21544 Egypt alexu.edu.eg 3 Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics Faculty of Engineering Alexandria University Alexandria 21544 Egypt alexu.edu.eg 4 Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA vt.edu 2015 2992015 2015 01 06 2015 08 09 2015 09 09 2015 2992015 2015 Copyright © 2015 A. M. Mansour et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

A new, efficient, flexible, and cheap antenna designed at 1.57 GHz microstrip patch antenna based on simple inkjet printer with improved performance using silver nanoparticles ink is developed. The antenna is printed on a kind of flexible substrate “glossy paper,” to offer the advantage of light and flexibility for different applications. The performance of silver nanoparticles ink has been studied through inkjet printing versus postsynthesis annealing and multilayer printing. The conductivity has been improved to have promising values up to 2 Ω/cm at temperatures up to 180°C. The surface morphology of the circuits has been analyzed using SEM with mean diameter of the nanoparticles around 100 nm, uniform surface distribution, and mean thickness of the printed layer around 230 microns. Also, a simple design of a coplanar waveguide (CPW) monopole Z-shaped antenna has been considered as an application of fabricated printed antenna using the studied silver nanoparticles ink through a cheap printer.