Study the potential of micro laser sintering additive manufacturing technology for metallic 3D printing horn antenna structure

Abstract

Applications for an antenna structure produced with additive manufacturing technology are numerous and promising. This study focuses explicitly on utilizing micro‐laser sintering (MLS) three‐dimensional (3D) printing technology to fabricate two rectangular horn antennas identical to a standard Pasternack® horn antenna, making the fabrication straightforward. The objective is to investigate how surface roughness affects antenna performance in a frequency range of 18 to 26.5 GHz. One antenna is polished and the other is left untouched, resulting in surface roughness of 4 and 6 µm, respectively, measured using a profilometer. Then, a vector network analyzer was used to assess their reflection coefficient, transmission characteristics, and radiation pattern and determine gains of 8.83 and 9.14 dBi for the polished and unpolished antennas, respectively. The study finds that both polished and unpolished antennas perform similarly, and their characteristics closely resembling simulated and standard antennas. Finally, the performance of the MLS‐printed metallic antennas is compared with horn antennas created using other 3D printing techniques. It reveals that the MLS‐printed metallic structures exhibit better performance, indicating that the MLS technology has great potential to print 3D metallic electromagnetic designs.