A conductive area reduction approach for ink-printed cell phone antenna

Conductive ink has been widely used in printed electronics and the opportunities towards commercial applications are constantly expanding. Some commonly available applications for conductive ink include flex circuits, disposable sensors, additive circuits, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and cell phone antennas etc. The conductive ink, for example silver, is relatively costly and hence the ability to reduce the amount of ink on each antenna would be both environmental friendly and economical. This paper introduces an approach on reducing the amount of conductive ink to be used on printing electrically small antenna. This approach sees a significant reduction in the amount of conductive area in the antenna while retaining the original performance characteristics of the antenna.