Soft and Flexible Antennas on Permittivity Adjustable PDMS Substrates

This work presents novel techniques for producing substrates for flexible antennas. The technique we propose is based on the use of an already existing and widely used substrate material Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), where the dielectric properties of the substrate are adjusted by loading the PDMS with low or high permittivity inclusions. The low adhesion characteristics of PDMS are overcome by immersing the conducting parts of the antenna inside the substrate, at the same time sealing the antenna against the influence of dust, or water. A patch antenna prototype is realized and characterized. The built antenna is soft and flexible and it shows good radiation characteristics in terms of input matching and total gain. Measurements are in a good compliance with the simulation results.