A Highly Flexible and Elastic Low-Cost Stencil-Printed Coplanar Waveguide on Rough Airbag Nylon 66 Textile

A highly flexible, stencil-printed coplanar waveguide (CPW) attached to a rugged nylon 66 substrate for carrying radio frequency (RF) signals up to 6 GHz is presented. In a manual, facile, and cost-effective printing process, this transmission line is applied directly on a car airbag's textile substrate with a highly elastic, strong adhesive, silver-based ink. The design idea, the manufacturing process, and microscope images are presented and discussed. Measured and full-wave simulated scattering parameters of this two-port waveguide demonstrate the effectiveness of the design approach and reveal expected shortcomings primarily due to limited conductivity and considerable surface roughness. Despite the rough, woven, coated, very lossy dielectric nylon substrate, the simple manufacturing process, the limited conductivity of the ink, and the glued-on connectors, a flexible yet stretchable RF planar transmission line is obtained.