Design of Tunable Multiband Hybrid Graphene Metal Antenna in Microwave Regime

Abstract

Graphene is an allotrope (form) of carbon consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in an hexagonal lattice. It is the basic structural element of many other allotropes of carbon, such as graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. In this paper, a tunable hybrid metal-graphene antenna in the microwave regime is proposed. This antenna composed of the copper patch and four graphene strips. The antenna designs used for the cellular long-term evolution system and the operating frequency bands of 1.8, 2.5, 2.6, and 3.6 GHz, are evaluated to demonstrate the working principle and the performance tradeoffs. Furthermore, the proposed antenna can be tuned by varying applied DC voltage on the graphene which leads to change in the chemical potential of the graphene and hence the surface conductivity and electrical properties are changed. The simulation results reveal that the antenna operates in multi-band where scattering factor S₁₁< -10 dB. In addition, the results show that hybrid metal-graphene frequency reconfigurable antennas can, at the same time, provide a tunable bandwidth and antenna matching.