Additive manufacturing of low cost and efficient proof of concepts for microwave passive components

Abstract

A study on the passive microwave components made by polymer additive manufacturing (polymer jetting) is presented. Different types of components (waveguides, couplers, power dividers, filters and antennas) are designed to be made in a single part. Using a simple and cost‐effective metallisation by applying silver paint, various prototypes with complex geometries have been manufactured to evaluate these proofs of concept and the robustness of the low‐cost approach to make microwave components. Different measurements show that the obtained filters can provide an acceptable unloaded Q factor of 400–500 for the operating frequencies of 12–22 GHz. Waveguiding structures such as a mode converter, which is used as a broadband antenna, have also notably efficiently worked up to the Ka band (36 GHz). Due to a remarkable accuracy of nearly 80 µm, the obtained results of the proposed coupler, power divider and antennas are consistent with the full wave simulations, which prove that the currently available three‐dimensional plastic printers can provide notably accurate prototypes to design original components.

Low-Cost Method for Internal Surface Roughness Reduction of Additively Manufactured All-Metal Waveguide Components

“…To challenge the above issues additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have been proposed as an alternative for the production of various high-frequency electronic circuits [12], [13], [14], [15]. WG components in such a scheme can be printed out of nonconductive material using, e.g., stereolithography process (SLA) [16], [17], [18], fused filament deposition (FFD) [19], [20], and polyjet printing [21], [22], [23]. Nevertheless, such approaches require an additional fabrication step, during which the 3-D-printed plastic components are metal coated.…”

Three‐dimensional printed X‐band waveguide variable bends with integrated filters

“…Among various 3D printing technologies, stereolithography (SLA) stands out as a preferred choice for fabricating waveguide filters due to its high accuracy and low surface roughness. Three‐dimensional printed filters with integrated waveguides (standard H ‐ or E ‐plane bends, or 90° twist) have been reported 11–18 . Three‐dimensional printed filters with twists have been demonstrated through a continuous twisting configuration 11 or a cascading configuration involving multiple steps 12 .…”

“…Three‐dimensional printed filters with twists have been demonstrated through a continuous twisting configuration 11 or a cascading configuration involving multiple steps 12 . Waveguide filter with E ‐plane bends based on inserted conformal TE 102 resonators has also been reported 13 . Another more compact solution was demonstrated by merging periodic structures into an E ‐plane bend, yielding much‐reduced size of the complex waveguide with a bandpass filtering function 14 .…”

A Horn Antenna Covered with a 3D-Printed Metasurface for Gain Enhancement

“…Particularly for complicated structures, where the methods of fabrication are difficult, 3D printing is expected to be promising method [6]. Furthermore, 3D printing is applied in fabricating various microwave components [7], transmit array structures [8,9], and lens antenna [10,11]. However, transmit array and lens antennas, which depend on the ratio of focal distance from source to diameter of aperture, are particularly larger in dimension.…”