Comparative analysis of zigzag and

armchair structures for graphene patch

antenna in THz band

Rajni Bala, Anupma Marwaha & Sanjay

Marwaha

Journal of Materials Science:

Materials in Electronics

ISSN 0957-4522

J Mater Sci: Mater Electron

DOI 10.1007/s10854-016-4394-8

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 Author's personal copy
J Mater Sci: Mater Electron
DOI 10.1007/s10854-016-4394-8
Comparative analysis of zigzag and armchair structures
for graphene patch antenna in THz band
Rajni Bala1 • Anupma Marwaha1 • Sanjay Marwaha2
Received: 13 October 2015 / Accepted: 21 January 2016
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract The present study proposes to investigate the
properties of graphene based nano patch antenna consid-
ering the semi-infinite, geometries of the graphene attain-
ing zigzag and armchair structures. The antenna designs are
simulated on HFSS software and the performance is ana-
lyzed in terahertz band based on the different electronic
properties. Depending on the edge shapes of structure
obtained after cutting the infinite graphene sheet, arrange-
ments formed are named as the zigzag and armchair. As
these configurations exhibit different electronic properties,
it is suggested that the respective graphene antenna will
also lead to varying radiations properties. It is evident from
the various results in terms of return loss, gain, radiation
efficiency and bandwidth that the graphene antenna based
on zigzag arrangement realizes better characteristic as
compared to armchair arrangement.
1 Introduction
Graphene is the name given to a flat monolayer 2D sheet of
carbon atoms distributed at the edges of regular hexagons
tightly packed [1] in a honeycomb lattice and can be
retrieved as a single sheet from HOPG (highly ordered
& Rajni Bala
rajnisliet@gmail.com
Anupma Marwaha
marwaha_anupma@yahoo.co.in
Sanjay Marwaha
marwaha_sanajy@yahoo.co.in
1
Department of ECE, SLIET Longowal, Sangrur, Punjab,
India
2
Department of EIE, SLIET Longowal, Sangrur, Punjab, India
pyrolytic graphite), which consists of many graphene
stacked sheets. The geometry of graphene is simple, reg-
ular and periodically hexagonal sheet with two atoms in
unit cells, and the infinite, planar structure can be created
by selecting material properties [2, 3]. However to create a
single layer from the crystal structure of graphite, the
infinite sheet must be cut into a suitable shape. A common
shape suitable for electronics applications, is a so-called
graphene nanoribbon (GNR), which is formed from strips
of graphene with ultra thin width at the size of \50 nm [4–
6]. Depending on the shape obtained at the edges of
nanoribbon after cutting the 2D infinite graphene sheet, two
different structures are obtained known as zigzag and
armchair nanoribbons as shown in Fig. 1. These are named
after their characteristic appearance on the atomic scale
and lead to different band structures and electronic spectra
for graphene nanoribbons. In general the graphene based
configurations are zero-gap semiconductor with its charge
carriers of carbon atoms in graphene are described by dirac
like Hamiltonian equation [7, 8] rather than the usual
Schrodinger equation can be seen as a significance of
graphene’s crystal structure. Imani et al. [9] reported that
depending on the shape of the nanoribbon edge, the
nanoribbons can have metallic or semiconducting charac-
teristics. Kann et al. [10] discussed that various edge
structure GNRs present different electronic properties
ranging from normal semiconductors to spin-polarized half
metals which open the possibility of GNRs to be applied in
design of electric devices.
The structures are identified from the edge shape of the
finite stripe of graphene in the direction perpendicular to
the defined width. The graphene sheet repeats its geometric
structure, and forms novel quasi one-dimensional (1D)
periodic structures. An armchair structure is cut so that the
edge looks as if it consists of repeated armchairs, as shown
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Fig. 1 The geometry of zigzag (black color lines) and armchair (red
color lines) (Color figure online)
in Fig. 1. The width of an armchair structure can be
determined by Eq. 1 using number of hexagonal rings or
dimer lines Nac across the sheet as shown in Fig. 2.
pffiffiffi
3 has been realized that edge only impacts the conductivity
Wac ¼ ðNac  1Þ acc ð1Þ
2 of graphene when it is cut into very narrow ribbons, e.g.,
Similarly the width of a zigzag ribbon is calculated by
Eq. 2 considering Nzz as the number of zigzag chains
across the graphene sheet [5, 6, 11].
3
Wzz ¼ ðNzz  1Þ acc ð2Þ
2 their effect on antenna characteristics is analyzed by
Figure 2 depicts the lattice structure of graphene
wherein each edge can be viewed to be terminated by
atoms of sub lattices A and B [8, 12]. The vectors a1 and a2
Fig. 2 Lattice structure of graphene
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J Mater Sci: Mater Electron
define the unit cell. The unit cell of the lattice is a rhom-
boid defined by the vectors
pffiffiffi
pffiffiffi 3 3
a1 ¼ 3aex and a2 ¼ aex þ aey ð3Þ
2 2
The two nearest neighbouring carbon atoms are sepa-
rated by ac-c = 1.42 Å where one Armstrong unit is
equivalent to 0.1 nm [7, 8, 13, 14]. The lattice constant a0
pffiffiffi
is related to the inter atomic distance via a0 ¼ 3acc .
It is emphasized here that when an infinite graphene is
cut to form finite graphene patch, it can apparently attain
any of the different configurations namely zigzag and
armchair preserving their inherent properties. The zigzag
configuration exhibits metallic properties and display no
elastic dissipation resulting in perfect conductivity.
Whereas armchair configuration can be classified as
metallic and semiconducting based on the number hexag-
onal rings (Nac). Further the semiconducting properties
have energy gaps varying as an inverse function of corre-
sponding nanoribbon width [1]. The researchers commonly
analyze the graphene antenna ignoring the edge structure
possessed by the graphene patch which greatly affects the
performance of the graphene patch antenna. Moreover it
\50 nm [5]. For wider ribbons, the impact of the edge
shape on the conductivity is literally negligible hence
preserving the resonant properties. The performance of
graphene based antenna has therefore been evaluated
considering the two different well defined edge shapes and
determining different parameters including, return loss,
gain, radiation efficiency, 2D and 3D radiation pattern and
bandwidth while maintaining the antenna resonating
frequency.
2 Modeling of zigzag and armchair structure
based graphene antenna
The modeling of graphene based rectangular shaped nano
patch antenna with planar structures in zigzag and armchair
configurations is performed on commercial high frequency
simulation (HFSS) software based on finite element
method (FEM). The wave propagation velocity for gra-
phene material depends on the patch dimensions, its reso-
nant frequency and the Fermi energy of the structure.
Following the basic concept, the resonant frequency of
V
graphene based antenna can be evaluated as fo ¼ 2LfP where
Vf is the wave propagation velocity for graphene material
[8, 15] and Lp stands for the nano patch length. The
important properties of graphene including quantum
transport mechanism, inherent large tunability makes this
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J Mater Sci: Mater Electron

material an ideal candidate for the next generation of Table 2 Dimensions of graphene based patch antenna
tunable devices and antenna. Charge carriers in graphene Design parameters Measurement
posses a very small effective mass and hence graphene
shows enormously attractive properties as tabulated in Operating frequency band 4.23–6.96 THz
Table 1. Further the two basic edge shapes of graphene Patch length and width (Lp 9 Wp) 30 9 25 lm
patch lead to different electronic spectra hence affecting Height of substrate (h) 7 lm
the electron transport and hence the radiation characteris- Substrate length and width (Ls 9 Ws) 120 9 90 lm
tics of the graphene antenna Length and width of k/4 transformer (L1 9 W1) 15 9 2.6 lm
Figure 3 depicts the geometry of graphene based zigzag Length and width of feed (L2 9 W2) 24 9 6 lm
and armchair structures as rectangular patch antenna on a
silicon dioxide (SiO2) substrate. The two structures
apparently refer to the boundaries along the length of
graphene patch. The interesting feature is that the elec-
tronic behavior in the bulk is modified by the different
types of boundaries. Consequent upon proper selection of
SiO2 layer for good optical contrast [20–25], the visibility

Table 1 Electrical and non-electrical properties of graphene material

Properties Graphene

Conductivity 108 S/m

2 -1 -1
Mobility (cm V s ) 8000–20000 [7, 8, 13]
Melting point (K) 3800 (graphite)
Thermal conductivity (910-3 W/m K) 3–5 [16, 17]
Temp. coeff. of resistance (910-3 K) -1.47
Mean Free Path @ room temperature 103
2
Maximum current density(A/cm ) 108 [18]
Breaking strength (N/m) 40 [19, 20]

Fig. 4 Return loss (in dB) plot (Color figure online)

Fig. 3 Graphene based patch antenna design with zigzag and

armchair structures Fig. 5 VSWR plot

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of even single graphene layer is established in antenna
design. The microstrip transmission line is matched to
patch antenna designed here to operate in THz region via a
quarter-wavelength microstrip transmission line with the
characteristic impedance selected to match the load.
Table 2 details the design parameters of the graphene patch
antenna.
Figure 4 shows the return loss S11 plotted as a function of
frequency in the range of 1–9 THz. It is clear that the value
of S11 is -42.04 dB for zigzag structure (with red color solid
line), and -25.90 dB for armchair structure (with green
color dotted line) at resonating frequency of 5.10 THz. The
Fig. 6 3D plot gain (in dB) a zigzag structure, b armchair structure
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Fig. 7 2D gain (in dB) as function of frequency
antenna resonates at 5.10 THz in contrast to the selected
design frequency of 5.5 GHz, the shift in frequency being
caused due to the fringing fields from the sides of the patch.
The dimensions of antenna can however be changed by
2-4 % in order to resonate exactly at 5.5 THz. However, the
main concern here is to analyze the radiation characteristics
for antenna for different graphene patch structures hence
ignoring minor deviations resonant frequency. The -10 dB
bandwidth observed from the return loss plot is 2.68 THz
with fractional bandwidth of 53.42 % for zigzag structure
and 2.52 THz with fractional bandwidth of 49.41 % for
armchair structure. Further the radiation efficiency as eval-
uated for the antenna is about 44 % for zigzag and 22 % for
armchair structure over the entire operational band of fre-
quencies in the range 4.23–6.96 THz.
VSWR for respective frequencies is plotted in Fig. 5.
The value of VSWR at resonant frequency is 1.01 for the
zigzag and 1.11 for armchair configurations of graphene
based structures. Figure 6 depicts the 3D gain of antenna
plotted for graphene patch with different geometrical pat-
terns namely zigzag and armchair. The peak gain obtained
is 7.895 dB and 7.4022 dB respectively for the zigzag and
armchair configurations. The 2D gain plotted in Fig. 7
shows that for both structures the gain achieved is rea-
sonably good with value above 5 dB over the operational
range.
The 3D polar plot for dB gain in the azimuth plane for
zigzag and armchair structural antenna are shown in Fig. 8
and it is clear from the simulated radiation pattern that
realized gains are in the broadside direction with / = 0°
(red), / = 90° (green), being the direction of maximum
radiation. The E-field radiation patterns are plotted in
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J Mater Sci: Mater Electron
Fig. 8 3D polar plot of dB gain in azimuth plane / = 0° (red) and /
= 90° (green) a zigzag structure, b armchair structure (Color
figure online)
Fig. 9. The E-field is shown to radiated mainly in the
broadside direction with minor back lobes at much reduced
field intensity. The appearance of back lobes is may be due
to the modeling of graphene patch as an arrangement of
Fig. 9 3D radiation pattern a zigzag structure, b armchair structure
hexagonal carbon atoms. However the radiated field
intensity agrees well with the antenna designed using sin-
gle slab of graphene patch.
3 Conclusions
In this paper, an attempt has been made to perform the
modeling of the planar rectangular shaped zigzag and
armchair structures for graphene based nano patch antenna
on silicon dioxide substrate material. FEM based HFSS
simulation software is used for numerical modeling of the
designed graphene based microstrip line fed patch antenna
for operating in the range of frequencies 1–9 THz. On
account of different electronic properties of the structures,
the comparative analysis has been performed by evaluating
the radiation characteristics of zigzag and armchair
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arrangements. The return loss value for the zigzag structure
is noticeably higher than that for armchair structure due to
the fundamental fact that the zigzag structure possesses
higher input impedances, which may be beneficial for
connecting to nano-electronic circuits. Overall good gain is
achieved attaining values nearly 7 dB and is comparable
for both the arrangements. It has however been observed
that the radiation efficiency is low as analysis is performed
considering zero chemical potential. The zigzag structure
exhibits 44 % efficiency as compared to 22 % for the
armchair case. The -10 dB bandwidth for zigzag structure
is 2.6 THz as observed from the return loss plot which
shows much improvement in bandwidth as compared with
armchair. with fractional bandwidths 53.42 and 49.41 %
respectively.
Acknowledgments This work is supported by the Department of
Electronics and Communication Engineering of Sant Longowal
Institute of Engineering and Technology, Longowal, Punjab, by
providing access to High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS)
Software.
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