Graphene transparent antennas
Shinji Koh, Shohei Kosuga, Ryosuke Suga, Shunichiro Nagata, Sho Kuromatsu, Takeshi Watanabe, Osamu Hashimoto
Abstract
Transparent antennas have attracted much attention because they can meet the demands of the Internet of Things (IoT) and fifth generation (5G) mobile communication technologies. From this point of view, intensive research and development has been carried out to produce materials with high optical transparency and low electrical resistance. Research on graphene transparent antennas is reviewed along with our experimental demonstration. The unique features of graphene as a material for transparent antennas are introduced and compared to the characteristics of metal-based and metal-oxide transparent conductors. The challenges involved in the fabrication of transparent antennas using graphene films grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) are described. Fabrication techniques of transparent antennas (transfer and patterning methods) and techniques to decrease the sheet resistance of the graphene films (stacking and doping methods) are described. The performance of the CVD graphene transparent antennas we have fabricated are presented.