Bandwidth Enhancement of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Antenna Using Structural Modifications and DGS in X-Band Applications

In this paper, a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) based patch antenna has been designed and fabricated to suit for X-band applications. First, a basic rectangular patch antenna is considered then structural modifications like slots on the patch and defects in the ground structure are introduced to improve the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. Considered two structures modifications in this work, a rectangular antenna with a slot at the center (forms U-Shape patch) and later introduced dumbbell shape DGS in the feed line of the U-shape antenna, which was designed to resonate at 10GHz in the X-band (8GHz - 12GHz). Three antennas are fabricated, and their performance is investigated using return loss, gain and radiation efficiency, etc. Here MWCNT material is prepared in bath sonicator, and material characterization is carried out using FESEM. The main motto of this paper is to overcome the demerit of copper-based conventional microstrip patch antenna in X-Band. From experimental results, a U-shaped MWCNT patch antenna with DGS gives 30% impedance bandwidth compared with antennas considered in this work. The applications of carbon nanotube-based antennas can be employed in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for callous chemical and gas environmental systems. MWCNT antennas are preferred over standard copper antennas in such situations, as standard copper antennas are easily oxidized.