Spray on MXene antennas turn surfaces into transmitters

A method for spraying invisibly thin MXene antennas onto flexible substrates could lead to next-generation wireless devices including wearables, functional fabrics, and IoT devices.

In research published in Science Advances, a group from Drexel University’s College of Engineering in Philadelphia reported a method for spraying the antennas that are made from MXene, a type of two-dimensional, metallic material that is said to perform as well as those being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and portable transducers.

"The ability to spray an antenna on a flexible substrate or make it optically transparent means that we could have a lot of new places to set up networks - there are new applications and new ways of collecting data that we can't even imagine at the moment," said Kapil Dandekar, PhD, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, who directs the Drexel Wireless Systems Lab, and was a co-author of the research.