Analysis and Design of Efficient Optically Transparent Antennas and Examples Realized with Silver Nanowires

Date

2026-01-01

Author

Eralp, Mehmet Emre
Cakir, Onuralp
Demirtas, Behiye
Ünalan, Hüsnü Emrah
Baktur, Reyhan
Aydın Çivi, Hatice Özlem

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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The dilemma of optically transparent antennas, regardless of what material they are made from, has been the trade-off between transparency and antenna efficiency. This study examines the fundamental parameters that govern the two contradicting properties and presents optimized antenna designs for the two most basic antenna geometries: monopole and patch. For validation, monopoles and patches were fabricated using silver nanowires (AgNWs) that have a lower cost and an ease of preparation compared to transparent conductive oxides. The main reason for the gain reduction is Ohmic loss on the transparent conductor. Therefore, the gain improvement for the monopole antenna is to widen the geometry, and for the patch antenna, it is to raise the frequency, together with choosing an appropriate substrate. The gain is shown to be further enhanced by applying conductive strips at locations where the radiating current is concentrated, and by stacking transparent conductors. The two methods can be combined for further improvement. The prototyped AgNWs monopole antenna demonstrates a wide band operation from 3.5 GHz to 5.9 GHz, with an efficiency of 50.4% and an improvement to 76.3% with the addition of the conductive strips while keeping the optical transparency higher than 80%. The fully transparent patch antenna with both the patch and ground plane made of AgNWs is recorded to have a gain and efficiency of 3.58 dBi and 44% at 8.9 GHz. These designs outperform the existing studies in the transparency-gain trade-offs at relatively low frequency (<10 GHz), as most prior designs rely on raising the frequency to improve gain.

Subject Keywords

optically transparent antenna, optically transparent conductors, silver nanowires, surface resistance

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=105027997651&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118619

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Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Article