A planar antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications covering the 3.1ââ?¬â??10.6 GHz range has been designed as a test bed for\r\nefficiency measurements of antennas manufactured using polymer conductors. Two types of conductive polymers, PEDOT and\r\nPPy (polypyrrole), with very different thicknesses and conductivities have been selected as conductors for the radiating elements.\r\nA comparison between measured radiation patterns of the conductive polymers and a copper reference antenna allows to estimate\r\nthe conductor losses of the two types of conductive polymers. For a 158 Ã?µm thick PPy polymer, an efficiency of almost 80% can be\r\nobserved over the whole UWB spectrum. For a 7 Ã?µm thick PEDOT layer, an average efficiency of 26.6% demonstrates, considering\r\nthe room for improvement, the potential of this type of versatile materials as flexible printable alternative to conductive metallic\r\npaints. The paper demonstrates that, even though the PEDOT conductivity is an order of magnitude larger than that of PPy, the\r\nthicker PPy layer leads to much higher efficiency over the whole UWB frequency range. This result highlights that high efficiency\r\ncan be achieved not only through high conductivity, but also through a sufficiently thick layer of conductive polymers.
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