Platinum-decorated carbon nanoparticle/polyaniline hybrid paste for flexible wideband dipole tag-antenna application

Abstract

Recently, tremendous effort has been devoted to the production of materials for flexible device systems due to the advancement of portable electronic devices. Solution-processed conducting polymers (CPs), as a promising approach, have been extensively studied owing to facile synthesis, high electrical conductivity, and various morphologies with diverse substrates. Here we report the demonstration of platinum decorated carbon nanoparticle embedded polyaniline:camphorsulfonic acid (Pt_C/PANI:CSA) hybrid paste for flexible electronic devices. First, platinum decorated carbon nanoparticles (Pt_C) were fabricated by chemical reduction of platinum cations following the carbonization step. The as-prepared Pt_C were added to the aniline monomer solution and then polymerization of aniline occurred to form the hybrid PANI:CSA based paste (Pt_C/PANI:CSA). The Pt_C/PANI:CSA was printed as a micro-pattern and exhibited a high electrical conductivity (792 S cm⁻¹) with flexible stability. Furthermore, it was applied to dipole tag-antenna application which displayed a wide bandwidth (0.55 GHz) and a high transmitted power efficiency (99.6%).