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Printed electronics offer a breakthrough in the penetration of information technology into everyday life. The possibility of printing electronic circuits will further promote the spread of the Internet of Things applications. Inks based on graphene have a chance to dominate this technology, as they potentially can be low cost and applied directly on materials like textile and paper. Here we report the environmentally sustainable route of production of graphene ink suitable for screen-printing technology. The use of non-toxic solvent Dihydrolevoglucosenone (Cyrene) significantly speeds up and reduces the cost of the liquid phase exfoliation of graphite. Printing with our ink results in very high conductivity (7.13 × 10 4  S m −1 ) devices, which allows us to produce wireless connectivity antenna operational from MHz to tens of GHz, which can be used for wireless data communication and energy harvesting, which brings us very close to the ubiquitous use of printed graphene technology for such applications. Printed conductive inks show promise for future electronic device applications. Here, the authors report synthesis of graphene inks with conductivity of 7.13 × 10^4 S/m by Cyrene assisted liquid phase exfoliation, and their applications in data communication and RF energy harvesting.

In this work, the relative dielectric permittivity of graphene oxide (GO), both its real and imaginary parts, have been measured under various humidity conditions at GHz. It is demonstrated that the relative dielectric permittivity increases with increasing humidity due to water uptake. This finding is very different to that at a couple of MHz or lower frequency, where the relative dielectric permittivity increases with decreasing humidity. This GO electrical property was used to create a battery-free wireless radio-frequency identification (RFID) humidity sensor by coating printed graphene antenna with the GO layer. The resonance frequency as well as the backscattering phase of such GO/graphene antenna become sensitive to the surrounding humidity and can be detected by the RFID reader. This enables battery-free wireless monitoring of the local humidity with digital identification attached to any location or item and paves the way for low-cost efficient sensors for Internet of Things (IoTs) applications.

In this paper, we report highly conductive, highly flexible, light weight and low cost printed graphene for wireless wearable communications applications. As a proof of concept, printed graphene enabled transmission lines and antennas on paper substrates were designed, fabricated and characterized. To explore its potentials in wearable communications applications, mechanically flexible transmission lines and antennas under various bended cases were experimentally studied. The measurement results demonstrate that the printed graphene can be used for RF signal transmitting, radiating and receiving, which represents some of the essential functionalities of RF signal processing in wireless wearable communications systems. Furthermore, the printed graphene can be processed at low temperature so that it is compatible with heat-sensitive flexible materials like papers and textiles. This work brings a step closer to the prospect to implement graphene enabled low cost and environmentally friendly wireless wearable communications systems in the near future.

Reduction of power consumption is the key target for modern electronic devices. To this end, a lot of attention is paid to zero-static power switches, being able to change their state between highly resistive and highly conductive and remain in this state even in the absence of external voltage. Still, the implementation of such switches is slow because of compatibility issues of new materials with CMOS technology. At the same time, printable technology enables low-cost processes at ambient temperature and integration of devices onto flexible substrates. Here we demonstrate that printed Ag/MoS 2 /Ag heterostructures can be used as zero-static power switches in radiofrequency/microwave spectrum and fully-integrated reconfigurable metasurfaces. Combined with graphene, our printed platform enables reconfigurable metasurface for electromagnetic wave manipulation and control for wireless communications, sensing, and holography. In addition, it is also demonstrated that the localised MoS 2 phase change may have promoted Ag diffusion in forming conductive filaments. Here, the authors fabricate printed Ag/MoS 2 /Ag heterostructures that can be used as zero-static power switches. When combined with a printed graphene metasurface, the platform enables reconfigurable electromagnetic wave manipulation and control.

A new metamaterial was demonstrated to absorb microwaves with 97.2%–97.7% absorption within a wide bandwidth of 1.56 GHz-18.3 GHz. The material has achieved the highest relative bandwidth and lowest thickness in the L to S-band reported so far. The design of multiple-layer metamaterial structures was for wide bandwidth microwave absorption. A one-step laser direct writing method was demonstrated to synthesize graphene and magnetic nanoparticles simultaneously. The laser direct writing enabled the achievement of an electrical sheet resistance from 57 to 480 Ω sq −1 with a 5% deviation. Microwave absorption in radar stealth technology is faced with challenges in terms of its effectiveness in low-frequency regions. Herein, we report a new laser-based method for producing an ultrawideband metamaterial-based microwave absorber with a highly uniform sheet resistance and negative magnetic permeability at resonant frequencies, which results in a wide bandwidth in the L- to S-band. Control of the electrical sheet resistance uniformity has been achieved with less than 5% deviation at 400 Ω sq −1 and 6% deviation at 120 Ω sq −1 , resulting in a microwave absorption coefficient between 97.2% and 97.7% within a 1.56–18.3 GHz bandwidth for incident angles of 0°–40°, and there is no need for providing energy or an electrical power source during the operation. Porous N- and S-doped turbostratic graphene 2D patterns with embedded magnetic nanoparticles were produced simultaneously on a polyethylene terephthalate substrate via laser direct writing. The proposed low-frequency, wideband, wide-incident-angle, and high-electromagnetic-absorption microwave absorber can potentially be used in aviation, electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppression, and 5G applications.

In this work, we have designed, fabricated and experimentally characterized a printed graphene nano-flakes enabled flexible and conformable wideband radar absorber. The absorber covers both X (8–12 GHz) and Ku (12–18 GHz) bands and is printed on flexible substrate using graphene nano-flakes conductive ink through stencil printing method. The measured results show that an effective absorption (above 90%) bandwidth spans from 10.4 GHz to 19.7 GHz, namely a 62% fraction bandwidth, with only 2 mm thickness. The flexibility of the printed graphene nano-flakes enables the absorber conformably bending and attaching to a metal cylinder. The radar cross section (RCS) of the cylinder with and without absorber attachment has been compared and excellent absorption has been obtained. Only 3.6% bandwidth reduction has been observed comparing to that of un-bended absorber. This work has demonstrated unambiguously that printed graphene can provide flexible and conformable wideband radar absorption, which extends the graphene’s application to practical RCS reductions.

The increasing demand for integrated communication and sensing has led to the development of Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) systems. However, strong self-interference (SI) between transmitting (TX) and receiving (RX) antennas remains a major obstacle, significantly degrading system performance in compact MIMO arrays. Traditional signal-processing-based cancellation methods face limitations in wideband scenarios due to high complexity and potential signal distortion. In this work, a novel metasurface-assisted decoupling structure is presented. The metasurface based on modified split-ring resonators (MSRRs) can suppress surface currents and reduce the coupling between TX and RX arrays. To further enhance isolation and reduce front-end self-interference in sensing-centric full-duplex JCAS, a multi-frequency null-space projection (NSP) beamforming algorithm is integrated with the antenna array design, forming a hardware–algorithm co-optimization framework. As proof of concept, a 2$$\\times$$2 patch antenna array incorporating the proposed metasurface operating in the 9–10 GHz band has been designed, fabricated, and characterized. The measurement results validate effectiveness. The findings suggest that the proposed decoupling approach offers a promising solution for enhancing electromagnetic isolation and overall system performance in next-generation JCAS applications such as intelligent transportation and indoor wireless sensing.

A novel compact left-handed delay line using four-cell of complementary split-ring resonators (CSRRs) has been designed, fabricated and characterised. It is found that the cell separation of CSRRs has significant effects on time delay. To obtain maximum time delay, each cell separation must be individually tuned and optimised. The results show that cell separation optimisation can prolong the delay time from 0.6 to 6.08 ns, increased by more than 90%. Furthermore, varactor diodes were embedded in the delay line to provide tunability. It is verified experimentally that the delay time can be tuned from 0.08 to 5.6 ns by varying DC bias from 0 to −20 V. In addition, a new equivalent circuit model has been developed and verified both numerically and experimentally, to take into account of the magnetic coupling between the rings in the adjacent cells, which has been neglected so far in published works. The proposed analysis reveals that such magnetic coupling can be sometimes very strong and has significant effects on circuit performance.

The design and analysis of meta-material inspired loaded monopole antenna for multiband operation are reported. The proposed antenna consists of multi resonators inspired from half mode composite right/left handed cells, which has a simple structure, compact size, and provides multiband functionalities. As a proof of concept, a triple band antenna covering all possible WiMAX operating bands, has been designed, fabricated, and characterized. The hosting monopole patch itself generates resonance for 3.3–3.8 GHz band, whereas the loaded metamaterial cells add extra resonance frequencies. The loading of two resonator cells introduces two extra resonances for 2.5–2.7 GHz and 5.3–5.9 GHz bands, respectively. The antenna's operating principle and design procedures with the aid of electromagnetic full wave simulation and experimental measurements are presented. The antenna has good omnidirectional patterns at all three bands. The monopole patch size is 13.5 × 6.5 mm2 and the whole antenna size (including the feed line) is 35 × 32 mm2. Compared with conventional single band microstrip patch radiator, the radiator size of this antenna is only 8.5% at 2.5 GHz, 17% at 3.5 GHz, and 37% at 5.5 GHz.

A quad band antenna with good gain and omni-directional pattern is proposed in this paper. The antenna design is based on loading a conventional monopole antenna by three different resonators. The resonators are inspired from the shunt branch of composite right-/left-handed cell. The resonators have a simple structure and compact size. The control of the frequency bands can be achieved arbitrarily and hence the suggested design methodology can be generalized to any required bands. The fabricated antenna prototype is operating at 2.6, 3.35, 5.15, and 6.1 GHz with bandwidth wider than 100 MHz for each band. The antenna's operating principle and design procedures with the aid of electromagnetic full wave simulation are presented. Finally, the experimental results exhibit good agreement with the simulated ones which confirm the proposed designed methodology. The proposed monopole antenna has a patch size of 13.5 mm × 6.5 mm and the whole antenna size (including the feed line) is 35 mm × 32 mm. Compared to conventional single-band microstrip patch radiator size, the proposed quad band radiator has the size of 9, 15, 37.5, and 72.5% at relevant frequency bands.