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Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics

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A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Carbon Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 12183

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Daping He

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Guest Editor

School of Science, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: graphene-based materials; nanocomposite materials; 5G communications; microwave electronics; energy devices

Dr. Bian Wu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710055, China
Interests: microwave/millimeter wave devices and antennas; artificial electromagnetic materials and devices
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is dedicated to reports on recent developments in the field of graphene-based materials, including fabrication, characterization, and most importantly, potential applications in RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave electronics and sensors. Since its discovery in 2004, graphene and graphene-based materials have been intensively investigated due to their unique properties including better flexibility and mechanical stability compared to their metal counterparts, unique electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as environmental benignancy. All these properties make graphene-based materials well suited for next-generation electronic devices, including but not limited to flexible displays, strain sensors, RF antennas, etc.

This Special Issue aims to survey recent progress in the development and optimization of the synthesis strategies of graphene-based materials, including graphene sheets, graphene films, and graphene inks and to explore the potential applications of these materials in the fabrication of next-generation RF/microwave electronics for 5G and wearable sensors for body-centric communications.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome.

Prof. Dr. Daping He
Dr. Bian Wu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

graphene-based materials
flexible sensors
RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave electronics
wearable antennas
5G communications
body-centric

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 5708 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Quad-Band and Polarization-Insensitive Metamaterial Absorber with a Low Profile Based on Graphene-Assembled Film

by Shiyi Jin, Haoran Zu, Wei Qian, Kaolin Luo, Yang Xiao, Rongguo Song and Bo Xiong

Materials 2023, 16(11), 4178; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma16114178 - 04 Jun 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 988

Abstract

A quad-band metamaterial absorber using a periodically arranged surface structure placed on an ultra-thin substrate is demonstrated in this paper. Its surface structure consists of a rectangular patch and four L-shaped structures distributed symmetrically. The surface structure is able to have strong electromagnetic interactions with incident microwaves, thereby generating four absorption peaks at different frequencies. With the aid of the near-field distributions and impedance matching analysis of the four absorption peaks, the physical mechanism of the quad-band absorption is revealed. The usage of graphene-assembled film (GAF) provides further optimization to increase the four absorption peaks and promotes the low-profile characteristic. In addition, the proposed design has good tolerance to the incident angle in vertical polarization. The proposed absorber in this paper has the potential for filtering, detection, imaging, and other communication applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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12 pages, 3917 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

An Ultra-Broadband and Highly-Efficient Metamaterial Absorber with Stand-Up Gradient Impedance Graphene Films

by Bian Wu, Biao Chen, Shuai Ma, Ding Zhang and Hao-Ran Zu

Materials 2023, 16(4), 1617; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma16041617 - 15 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1323

Abstract

Metamaterial absorbers (MMAs) that absorb electromagnetic waves among an ultra-broad frequency band have attracted great attention in military and civilian applications. In this paper, an ultra-broadband and highly-efficient MMA is presented. The unit cell of the proposed MMA was constructed with two cross-placed stand-up gradient impedance graphene films, which play a key role in improving impedance matching. Considering the trade-off between absorbing performance and processing complexity, in our design, we adopted the stand-up graphene films that have a gradient with three orders of magnitude in total. The simulated results of the proposed absorber show an ultra-broadband absorption (absorptivity > 90%) from 1.8 GHz to 66.7 GHz and a highly-efficient absorption (absorptivity > 97%) in the range of 2–21.7 GHz and 39.6–57 GHz. The field analysis was adopted to explain the mechanism of the proposed absorber. To validate this design, a prototype of 20 × 20 units was processed and assembled. The graphene films were processed with graphene conductive ink using screen print technology. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones. The proposed absorber may find potential applications in the field of stealth technologies and electromagnetic interference. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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10 pages, 2928 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Compressed Graphene Assembled Film with Tunable Electrical Conductivity

by Qiang Chen, Zhe Wang, Huihui Jin, Xin Zhao, Hao Feng, Peng Li and Daping He

Materials 2023, 16(2), 526; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma16020526 - 05 Jan 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1127

Abstract

Graphene and graphene-based materials gifted with high electrical conductivity are potential alternatives in various related fields. However, the electrical conductivity of the macro-graphene materials is much lower than their metal counterparts. Herein, we improved the electrical conductivity of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) based graphene assembled films (GAFs) by applying a series of compressive stress and systematically investigated the relationship between the compressive stress and the electrical conductivity. The result indicates that with increasing applied compressive stress, the sheet resistance increased as well, while the thickness decreased. Under the combined effect of these two competing factors, the number of charge carriers per unit volume increased dramatically, and the conductivity of compressed GAFs (c-GAFs) showed an initial increasing trend as we applied higher pressure and reached a maximum of 5.37 × 10⁵ S/m at the optimal stress of 450 MPa with a subsequent decrease with stress at 550 MPa. Furthermore, the c-GAFs were fabricated into strain sensors and showed better stability and sensitivity compared with GAF-based sensors. This work revealed the mechanism of the tunable conductivity and presented a facile and universal method for improving the electrical conductivity of macro-graphene materials in a controllable manner and proved the potential applications of such materials in flexible electronics like antennas, sensors, and wearable devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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11 pages, 3186 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Dual-Band Conformal Antenna Based on Highly Conductive Graphene-Assembled Films for 5G WLAN Applications

by Zelong Hu, Zhuohua Xiao, Shaoqiu Jiang, Rongguo Song and Daping He

Materials 2021, 14(17), 5087; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma14175087 - 06 Sep 2021

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 2441

Abstract

Flexible electronic devices are widely used in the Internet of Things, smart home and wearable devices, especially in carriers with irregular curved surfaces. Light weight, flexible and corrosion-resistant carbon-based materials have been extensively investigated in RF electronics. However, the insufficient electrical conductivity limits their further application. In this work, a flexible and low-profile dual-band Vivaldi antenna based on highly conductive graphene-assembled films (GAF) is proposed for 5G Wi-Fi applications. The proposed GAF antenna with the profile of 0.548 mm comprises a split ring resonator and open circuit half wavelength resonator to implement the dual band-notched characteristic. The operating frequency of the flexible GAF antenna covers the Wi-Fi 6e band, 2.4–2.45 GHz and 5.15–7.1 GHz. Different conformal applications are simulated by attaching the antenna to the surface of cylinders with different radii. The measured results show that the working frequency bands and the radiation patterns of the GAF antenna are relatively stable, with a bending angle of 180°. For demonstration of practical application, the GAF antennas are conformed to a commercial router. The spectral power of the GAF antenna router is greater than the copper antenna router, which means a higher signal-to-noise ratio and a longer transmission range can be achieved. All results indicate that the proposed GAF antenna has broad application prospects in next generation Wi-Fi. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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14 pages, 7062 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Low-Profile Ultrawideband Antenna Based on Flexible Graphite Films for On-Body Wearable Applications

by Wenhua Li, Haoran Zu, Jinjin Liu and Bian Wu

Materials 2021, 14(16), 4526; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma14164526 - 12 Aug 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2254

Abstract

This paper presents a low-profile ultrawideband antenna for on-body wearable applications. The proposed antenna is based on highly conductive flexible graphite films (FGF) and polyimide (PI) substrate, which exhibits good benefits such as flexibility, light weight and corrosion resistance compared with traditional materials. By introducing flaring ground and an arrow-shaped slot, better impedance matching is achieved. The wearable antenna achieves a bandwidth of 122% from 0.34 GHz to 1.4 GHz, with a reflection coefficient of less than −10 dB, while exhibiting an omnidirectional pattern in the horizontal plane. To validate the proposed design, the wearable antenna with a profile of ~0.1 mm was fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with simulated ones, which indicates a suitable candidate for on-body wearable devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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Review

Jump to: Research

18 pages, 3760 KiB

Open AccessReview

Graphene-Based Electrode Materials for Neural Activity Detection

by Weichen Wei and Xuejiao Wang

Materials 2021, 14(20), 6170; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma14206170 - 18 Oct 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2835

Abstract

The neural electrode technique is a powerful tool for monitoring and regulating neural activity, which has a wide range of applications in basic neuroscience and the treatment of neurological diseases. Constructing a high-performance electrode–nerve interface is required for the long-term stable detection of neural signals by electrodes. However, conventional neural electrodes are mainly fabricated from rigid materials that do not match the mechanical properties of soft neural tissues, thus limiting the high-quality recording of neuroelectric signals. Meanwhile, graphene-based nanomaterials can form stable electrode–nerve interfaces due to their high conductivity, excellent flexibility, and biocompatibility. In this literature review, we describe various graphene-based electrodes and their potential application in neural activity detection. We also discuss the biological safety of graphene neural electrodes, related challenges, and their prospects. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Graphene-Based Materials in Sensors and RF Electronics)

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