MXene-Coated 3D Printed Horn Antennas for Ku Frequency Band

Abstract

Demands for lightweight, scalable, and rapidly fabricated radio-frequency components are emerging in aerospace and portable wireless communication systems. This work introduces a lightweight, additively manufactured MXene-coated horn antenna operating in the Ku band (12 to 18 GHz). Aqueous colloidal Ti3C2Tx MXene was applied to form conformal, conductive coatings on polymeric horn antenna surfaces to reduce the fabrication complexities. The performance of the MXene-based antennas was investigated as a function of 3D-printed polymer base filaments such as PLA, PET G, PA 6, and PA 12, 3D-printing methods including FDM and SLS, and concentrations of MXene 32 and 18 mg g−1. To demonstrate comparable electromagnetic performance, the fabricated MXene antennas were quantitatively compared with a conventional aluminum counterpart at the center frequency. The root-mean-square-error of the average transmission coefficient, (Formula presented.), was evaluated, where the difference in results indicates an RMSE below 0.34 dB, accompanied by a gain difference of only 0.2 dB. Furthermore, the correlation coefficient, r, was evaluated to assess the similarity of the responses, yielding values exceeding 0.98 for all tested antennas, confirming the high degree of agreement between the MXene-based and conventional aluminum antennas.