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Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal ■■ (2015) ■■–■■

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Engineering Science and Technology,

an International Journal Press: Karabuk University, Press Unit
ISSN (Printed) : 1302-0056
ISSN (Online) : 2215-0986
ISSN (E-Mail) : 1308-2043

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Full Length Article

Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for

novel substrate materials
Rajni Bala *, Anupma Marwaha
Department of ECE, SLIET Longowal, Punjab, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: The selection of appropriate substrate material acts as a performance regulator for miniaturized graphene
Received 2 April 2015 patch antenna. The substrate material not only controls the transport properties of graphene but also
Received in revised form influences the resonant properties of the graphene patch antenna. The edge fed microstrip line graphene
9 July 2015
based rectangular patch antenna is designed here for operating in the frequency range 2.67–2.92 THz
Accepted 3 August 2015
Available online
for wireless applications. The performance is investigated for silicon nitride, aluminum oxide, boron nitride,
silica and quartz substrate materials on the basis of return loss, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), ab-
sorption cross section, bandwidth and radiation efficiency. The comparison of results shows that silicon
Keywords:
Graphene nitride exhibits overall excellent performance by the virtue of having higher bandwidth and radiation
Substrate materials efficiency as compared to other chosen substrate materials.
Miniaturized patch antenna Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Karabuk University.
Terahertz regime This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
HFSS nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction should increase and hence decrease the radiation efficiency.

Graphene material exhibits numerous attractive pure multi-
physics, electrical [1] and mechanical properties [2]. These properties
coupled with CMOS compatibility promise smart miniaturized systems
which are highly useful in wireless communications. CMOS com-
patible microwave graphene based patch antennas, still at their
infancy, assure extremely low noise and high speed communica-
tions [3]. Moreover, the carrier concentration and chemical potential
in graphene based patch antennas can be adjusted through bias
voltage which results in tunable characteristics highly desirable for
electromagnetic applications [4]. Currently research is being carried
out reporting various new materials which can be placed as sub-
strates for the graphene patch antenna, as it has been observed that
utilization of novel substrate materials on graphene antenna is not
yet abundant and confined to simple materials like silicon [5,6], silicon
dioxide, quartz [7], polyamide [8], duroid [9], etc. The initial study
using graphene in antenna at microwaves was presented in 2012,
which consisted of a graphene patch over a dielectric silicon sub-
strate (εr = 11.2) with thickness of 1 μm. The authors were able to
confirm that the antenna resonant frequency is decreased, virtually
consistent with the theoretical model at 0.5 THz, which is indepen-
dent of the substrate size [6]. A second important observation is that
as the value of dielectric constant increases, the surface wave losses
Tamagnone et al. [10] used a low permittivity transparent glass sub-
strate (εr = 3.8) for graphene patch obtaining performances comparable
to its metal implementation. The results indicate that although the
patch is well-matched to the THz continuous-wave photo-mixers, the
antenna radiation efficiency is low even for simple geometries due
to the intrinsic dissipation losses of substrate material. Gomez-
Diaz and Perruisseau-Carrier [11] presented an edge feed patch
antenna using graphene material with dielectric permittivity of 3.2.
The authors showed that this antenna is resulting in approximately
60% radiation efficiency for various values of chemical potential at
THz frequency regions, but there is very limited bandwidth. In Ref.
8, Anand et al. have designed graphene based patch antenna on the
polyimide (εr = 3.5) substrate and investigated radiation character-
istics of a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) based microstrip patch antenna
in terahertz band. The antenna produced maximum gain of 5.09 dB
and directivity of 5.71 dB is produced at 0.75 THz. These results clearly
point toward the fact that the antenna achieved very low −10 dB im-
pedance bandwidth of 6.67% in the band of operation. An attempt
has been made in this paper to investigate new substrate materials
such as silicon nitride (Si3N4) [12], aluminum oxide (Al2O3) [13] and
boron nitride (BN) [14] in addition to silica and quartz for the graphene
patch antenna in order to achieve broad bandwidth and improved
radiation efficiency.

2. Novel substrate materials

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 919463707000, fax: 01672-280057.
E-mail address: rajnisliet@gmail.com (R. Bala). The choice of suitable dielectric substrate material is critical for
Peer review under responsibility of Karabuk University. graphene antenna as the dielectric constant and thickness of the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jestch.2015.08.004
2215-0986/Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Karabuk University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-
ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
and Technology, an International Journal (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.jestch.2015.08.004
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
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substrate greatly affect the impedance properties and hence the res- no freely movable electrons in its crystal structure like in metals.
onant frequency of the antenna [15]. The substrate material is also Quartz is very pure, has a high chemical resistance, good thermal
responsible for varying charge carrier density in graphene patch thus shock resistance and is very strong in compression. Moreover
controlling its carrier mobility. This feature contributes toward graphene on a quartz substrate shows an interesting behavior when
tunable properties of graphene. It has been observed from the lit- exposed to electric fields. The absorption of millimeter (radio) waves
erature that still there is possibility to explore many dielectric increases by 90% over 125–165 GHz bandwidth, extensible to mi-
materials including silicon compounds such as Si3N4, Al2O3, BN, silica crowave and low-terahertz frequencies, while remaining transparent
and quartz for graphene patch antenna which would improve the to visible light [19].
quality even further. Silicon nitride is a compound material syn-
thesized through several different chemical reaction methods. It can
be polished to a very smooth reflective surface, giving an outstand- 3. Design specifications of graphene patch antenna
ing appearance. Silicon nitride is an electrical insulator and may be
used in many severe mechanical, thermal and wearable applica- The rectangular patch antenna consisting of a conducting patch
tions. Silicon nitride is a rather expensive material but its and a ground plane separated by a thin dielectric substrate is de-
performance to cost–benefit ratio is excellent in the applications signed here as shown in Fig. 1. The rectangular patch printed on
where it can do better than the normally utilized materials with different novel substrate materials is considered to be of same thick-
long life and very reliable low maintenance operation. Aluminum ness “h”. In order to operate in the fundamental TM10 mode, the
oxide is a chemical compound commonly referred to as alumina. length of the patch must be slightly less than λ/2, where λ is the
It has excellent combination with graphene patch as it improves the wavelength in the dielectric medium and is equal to λo/√εreff, where
dielectric’s wear resistance and decreases friction [16], and has a λo is the free space wavelength. The TM10 mode implies that the field
very wide range of applications. As material science progresses the varies one λ/2 cycle along the length, and there is no variation along
dielectric materials are also continuously being improved, espe- the width of the patch. Hence, an effective dielectric constant (εreff)
cially in strength and durability. Al2O3, an electrical insulator that must be obtained in order to account for the fringing and the wave
most commonly occurs in crystalline form, called corundum, has propagation in the line. The value of εreff is slightly less then εr because
recently attracted the attention of the research community due to the fringing fields around the periphery of the patch are not con-
its novel mechanical, high thermal conductivity, and chemical and fined in the dielectric substrate [20].The antenna is edge fed with
electronic properties [17]. Due to its unique characteristics, alumi- a microstrip line with quarter wave transformer for providing the
num oxide has given rise to a plethora of potential applications in impedance matching. The antenna is modeled and simulated using
many diverse fields such as high temperature electrical insulators, Finite element method (FEM) based high frequency structure sim-
high voltage insulators, electronic substrate, ultra high-speed tran- ulator (HFSS) simulation software using different substrate materials
sistors and instrumentation parts for thermal property test machines
[13]. Boron nitride is anisotropic in its electrical and mechanical prop-
erties due to the platy hexagonal amorphous and crystalline forms.
It also has potential use in nanotechnology [14]. Boron nitride offers
much superior thermal and chemical stability. However, current
studies on BN reveal it to be a very good electrical insulator unlike
graphite, with low dielectric constant and loss tangent but high elec-
trical resistance and used for microwave tubes, microcircuit
packaging and electronic parts such as heat sinks, substrates, coil
forms, and prototypes [18]. Silica is one of the most abundant oxide
materials in the earth’s crust. It can exist in an amorphous form or
in a variety of crystalline forms. It often occurs as a non-crystalline
(glass) oxidation product on the surface of silicon or silicon com-
pounds. Its highly linked three dimensional structure has low
dielectric constant, low dielectric loss and near zero thermal ex-
pansion coefficient. The dielectric properties are stable up over
gigahertz frequencies. Silica material is highly supportive for tem-
perature insensitive optical components and also useful for
microwave and millimeter wave components. The glass may be clear
or translucent, in which case it is often referred to as fused quartz.
Quartz is also an anisotropic and electrical insulator, as there are Fig. 1. Top view of graphene based rectangular patch antenna.

Table 1
Properties of different substrate materials.

Substrate materials SI/metric Si3N4 Al2O3 BN Silica Quartz

Mechanical properties
Density gm/cc 3.29 3.69 1.9 2.2 2.5
Elastic modulus GPa 310 300 46.9 – 60
Poisson’s ratio – 0.27 0.21 – – –
Thermal properties
Thermal conductivity W/m·°K 30 18 30 1.5 1.4
Coefficient of thermal expansion 10–6/°C 3.3 8.1 11.9 4.5 8
Specific heat J/kg·°K 691 880 1610 745 750
Electrical properties
Dielectric constant – 9.5 9.1 4.6 4.0 3.78
Dissipation factor – 0.0 0.0007 0.0017 – –

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
and Technology, an International Journal (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.jestch.2015.08.004
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Table 2 antenna is created for more realistic simulation. The computa-

Design specifications. tional efficiency and accuracy is further enhanced due to the useful
Design parameters Measurement feature of automatic adaptive mesh generation and refinement. The
Length of patch (Lp) 22 μm simulations are executed subject to the suitable boundary condi-
Width of patch (Wp) 30 μm tions. The post-processing is further performed for analysis of results
Height of substrate (h) 3 μm obtained by determination of other parameters based on the field
Length of substrate (Ls) 100 μm distributions [21,22].
Width of substrate (Ws) 63 μm
Length of λ/4 transformer (L1) 14 μm
Width of λ/4 transformer (W1) 1.3 μm 4. Performance evaluation
Length of feed (L2) 22 μm
Width of feed (W2) 5.5 μm The use of graphene patch as conducting material for antenna
is expected to have enormous potential to enhance bandwidth and
radiation efficiency due to extraordinary electromagnetic proper-
with properties as tabulated in Table 1. Table 2 details the design ties and functionalities. The different antenna parameters such as
parameters of the graphene patch antenna. gain, return loss, VSWR, absorption cross section and radiation char-
HFSS utilizes differential equation based FEM full wave solver acteristic have been determined for graphene patch antenna
requiring little analytical pre-processing. The 3D model of the for appropriate selection of dielectric substrate to achieve the

Fig. 2. Return loss (in dB) curves for different substrate materials, Si3N4 (red solid line), Al2O3 (green double dot line), silica (purple long dash line), quartz (brown double
dot dash line) and BN (blue solid line).

Fig. 3. VSWR curves for different substrate materials, Si3N4 (red solid line), Al2O3 (green double dot line), silica (purple long dash line), quartz (brown double dot dash line)
and BN (blue solid line).

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
and Technology, an International Journal (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.jestch.2015.08.004
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Table 3 The absorption cross section is defined as the fractional inci-

Performance comparison of miniaturized graphene patch antenna for various sub- dent power absorbed by graphene and is expected to take maximum
strate materials.
values at the resonant frequency [20]. Fig. 7 shows the absorption
Substrate parameters Resonating Return VSWR Radiation −10 dB cross section of graphene patch antenna for different substrate ma-
frequency l(dB) efficiency Bandwidth
Material Dielectric terials acquired through numerical simulation.
(THz) (%) (GHz)
constant The results obtained from the designed antenna for Si3N4, Al2O3,
Si3N4 εr = 9.5 2.7 −26.71 1.1 100 270 BN, quartz and silica as substrate materials depicted in Table 3 can
Al2O3 εr = 9.1 2.7 −20.70 1.2 98.4 240 be used as a comparative measure for optimally selecting the sub-
BN εr = 4.6 2.9 −12.19 1.7 87.9 80 strate for the graphene patch antenna based on the evaluated
Silica εr = 4.0 2.81 −21.23 1.2 92.3 107.8
parameters.
Quartz εr = 3.78 2.87 −16.02 1.4 89.6 87.9

5. Conclusions

In this paper, an attempt has been made to examine the effect

enhanced performance parameters. The return loss should be less
than −10 dB for proper impedance matching and is determined for
the model with various substrate materials as depicted in Fig. 2. The
simulated result shows that the return loss values for respective res-
onant mode frequencies is −26.71 dB for Si3N4 at 2.7 THz, −20.70 dB
for Al2O3 at 2.7 THz, −12.19 dB for BN at 2.9 THz, −21.23 dB for silica
at 2.81 THz and −16.02 dB for quartz at 2.87 THz. For the pro-
posed design the impedance bandwidth achieved is in the range
of 80–270 GHz at different resonant frequencies as depicted in
Table 3. It can be clearly seen that the maximum bandwidth of
270 GHz is obtained for the patch antenna on Si3N4 substrate.
VSWR values plotted in Fig. 3 depict the respective variations
well below 2. The Si3N4 substrate leads to VSWR value of nearly 1
at the corresponding resonant frequency of 2.7 THz.
The present analysis has been performed on graphene model as-
suming zero chemical potential thus limiting the achievable radiation
efficiency. The radiation efficiency capabilities can however be com-
pensated by using substrate material with higher dielectric constant.
It is clearly evident from Fig. 4 that the radiation efficiency obtained
for selected substrate materials is more than 87%, which is reason-
ably good for design of graphene patch antenna for wireless applications.
The antenna pattern describes the relative strength of the ra-
diated field in multiple directions from the antenna. 2D and 3D
radiation patterns for different substrate materials of given antenna
are shown in Figs. 5 and 6 respectively.
of substrate material on the performance of microstrip edge feed
antenna for terahertz regime. Quarter wave transformer is used for
optimizing the resonant properties. FEM based HFSS simulation soft-
ware is used for numerical modeling of the designed antenna for
operating in the frequency range of 2.67–2.92 THz. In addition to
conventional substrates novel materials have been suggested for ob-
taining enhanced performance. Silicon nitride attains maximum
return loss value of −26.71 dB with almost ideal value of VSWR. It
is observed that reasonably good dB gain with value more than 5 dB
is achieved at the resonating frequency for all the substrate mate-
rials. The −10 dB bandwidth for silicon nitride observed from the
return loss plot is 270 GHz, which shows much improvement in
bandwidth as compared with other substrate materials. Therefore
it can be concluded that silicon nitride can be the suitable choice
for substrate material for the graphene based miniaturized patch
antenna for wireless applications.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering and the Department of Electrical and
Instrumentation Engineering of Sant Longowal Institute of Engi-
neering and Technology, Longowal, Punjab, by providing access to
High Frequency Structural Simulator Software.

Fig. 4. Radiation efficiency curves for different substrate materials, Si3N4 (red solid line), Al2O3 (green double dot line), silica (purple long dash line), quartz (brown double
dot dash line) and BN (blue solid line).

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
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Fig. 5. 2D Radiation patterns (a) Si3N4, (b) Al2O3, (c) BN, (d) silica and (e) quartz.

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
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Fig. 6. 3D Radiation patterns (a) Si3N4, (b) Al2O3, (c) BN, (d) silica and (e) quartz.

Please cite this article in press as: Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha, Investigation of graphene based miniaturized terahertz antenna for novel substrate materials, Engineering Science
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Fig. 7. Absorption cross section (in μm2) of graphene at tunable resonant frequencies.
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