Fabrication of Transparent Antenna Using Metal Mesh Made of Silver/Copper/Nickel through Additive Manufacturing Based on Electric-field-driven Microscale 3D Printing

doi:10.3901/JME.2025.13.315

Abstract

Abstract: Transparent antenna using metal mesh has been applied in various fields such as 5G/6G communication, intelligent driving, wearable electronics, and more. With the rapid development of communication technology, the iteration and upgrade speed of transparent antennas has accelerated. Currently, the low-cost, fast, and flexible manufacturing of high-performance metal-grid transparent antennas is the biggest technical bottleneck that restricts their product design, performance verification, and commercial application. In response to this challenging issue, a silver/copper/nickel-based composite metal-grid transparent antenna is proposed, which has the advantages of high conductivity and low conductor loss. Additionally, a composite additive manufacturing method based on electric-field-driven(EFD) micro 3D printing to achieve flexible and rapid manufacturing of multi-material composite metal-grid microstructures is introduced. It enables the flexible fabrication of conductive patterns of arbitrary shapes through EFD microscale 3D printing and combines the volume forming characteristics of electroplating to achieve the rapid manufacturing of high-performance composite metal antennas. Through experiments, the effects of printing and plating process parameters on the precision and quality of formed metal mesh and their patterns were revealed. Based on the proposed method and the optimized process parameters, a transparent microstrip antenna with a center frequency of 2.45 GHz is designed and fabricated with a line width of 20 μm, a period of 500 μm, a square resistance of 0.29 Ω/sq, a transmittance of 78%, and a peak gain of 2.24 dB with an radiation efficiency of 38.26%. The results show that this method overcomes the problems of high square resistance, low gain and radiation efficiency of metal-grid transparent antenna fabricated by conventional processes by forming silver/copper/nickel structures. Moreover, it overcomes the drawbacks of high cost, low efficiency (such as photolithography) and low resolution (such as inkjet printing), and it demonstrates significant advantages in the rapid development of high-performance transparent antennas, showing promising prospects for industrial applications.

Key words: transparent antenna, metal mesh, electric-field-driven micro 3D printing, additive manufacturing

CLC Number:

TG156
TN82

JIN Maopeng, ZHANG Houchao, WANG Fei, LI Yansheng, CHEN Shuo, LI Yirui, BAI Yanjun, LI Hongke, XU Quan, ZHAO Jiawei, ZHANG Guangming, LAN Hongbo. Fabrication of Transparent Antenna Using Metal Mesh Made of Silver/Copper/Nickel through Additive Manufacturing Based on Electric-field-driven Microscale 3D Printing[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2025, 61(13): 315-326.

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