Fully Printed VO2 Switch Based Reconfigurable PIFA / T-shaped Monopole Antenna

A recent trend in frequency reconfigurable antennas is the use of a vanadium dioxide (VO
₂
) layer as a radiofrequency switch to operate at different frequency bands. Typically, the deposition of a VO
₂
switch utilizes complex fabrication processes which result in higher costs. The ideal approach would be to use low-cost additive manufacturing techniques, such as screen printing. This work presents a novel fully screen-printed frequency reconfigurable PIFA / T-shaped monopole antenna with a printed VO
₂
switch. The switch operates through thermal activation and reconfigures the frequency band. The antenna operates at 2.7 GHz band or at 3.5 GHz band for two different operational modes of the VO
₂
switch. The antenna achieved 2.14 dBi gain at 3.5GHz.