Silver-Nanoparticle-Based Screen-Printing and Film Characterization of a Disposable, Dual-Band, Bandstop Filter on a Flexible Polyethylene Terephthalate Substrate

Abstract

This paper presents a silver-nanoparticle-based, screen-printed, high-performance, dual-band, bandstop filter (DBBSF) on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. Using screen-printing techniques to process a highly viscous silver printing ink, high-conductivity printed lines were implemented at a web transfer speed of 5 m/min. Characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the printed lines were shown to be characterized by smooth surfaces with a root mean square roughness of 7.986 nm; a significantly higher thickness (12.2 μm) than the skin depth; and a high conductivity of2×107 S/m. These excellent printed line characteristics enabled the implementation of a high-selectivity DBBSF using shunt-connected uniform impedance resonators (UIRs). Additionally, the inductive loading effect of T-shaped stubs on the UIRs, which were analyzed using S-parameters based on lumped parameter calculations, was used to improve the return losses of the geometrically optimized DBBSF. The measured minimum return loss and maximum insertion loss of 28.26 and 1.58 dB, respectively, at the central frequencies of 2.56 and 5.29 GHz of a protocol screen-printed DBBSF demonstrated the excellent performance of the material and its significant potential for use in future cost-effective, flexible WiMax and WLAN applications.