Electrical Characterization of Highly Efficient, Optically Transparent Nanometers-Thick Unit Cells for Antenna-on-Display Applications

This paper presents a novel method of characterizing optically transparent diamond-grid unit cells at millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum. The unit cell consists of Ag-alloy grids featuring 2000-Å thickness and 3 µm grid-width, resulting in 88% optical transmittance and sheet resistance of 3.22 Ω/sq. The devised characterization method enables accurate and efficient modeling of transparent circuits at mmWave. The validity of this approach is studied by devising an optically transparent patch antenna operating at 30.34 GHz with a measured gain of 3.2 dBi. The featured analysis and demonstration paves way to a novel concept of integrating optically transparent antennas within the active region of display panels in the future.