Suitability of roll-to-roll reverse offset printing for mass production of millimeter-wave antennas: Progress report

Abstract

In this work, we investigate different printing technologies suitable for mass production of millimeter-wave antennas and other devices, e.g., holograms and frequency selective absorbers, on flexible substrates. We concentrate especially on roll-to-roll reverse offset printing. The driving factors are low cost, high accuracy, high efficiency, and reliable performance. Therefore, we need to find and characterize suitable flexible substrates (permittivity and loss tangent at mmwavelengths), conducting inks (viscosity, surface resistance of the resulting conducting layer), adhesion of the ink to the substrate, and feature size capable for printing mm-wave antennas and other passive devices in high volumes.

On the One-Antenna Gain Measurement Method in Probe Station Environment at mm-Wave Frequencies

“…( The author of this dissertation has also co-authored 5 other articles [9][10][11][12][13] relevant to the topic of this dissertation.…”

Terahertz Conductivity of Silver Nanowire Layers

“…35,40 The direct deposition of AgNW layers by printing seems to be the most attractive and promising technique due to its advantages, such as low cost, the facility of production,and the feasibility of large-scale integration. 33,41 One of the AgNW layers' essential characteristic (which is crucial for THz antennas and reflective surfaces) is that they can keep relatively high and frequency independent conductivity in a wide frequency range. 14,36 It has been demonstrated that AgNW films with relatively high optical transparency are suitable for plasmonic devices operating in the THz range.…”

Electromagnetic Characterisation of Materials by Using Transmission/Reflection (T/R) Devices

“…Those kinds of application require highly conductive inks that may exhibit high losses, which, in turn, can be exploited for the design of absorbing materials [10][11][12][13][14][15] and for electromagnetic signature control [16]. The applicability of these techniques has been recently pushed to above 100 GHz using reverse offset (RO) printing, which allows high line-resolution and increases printing speed [17,18]. Microwave properties of materials are also of crucial importance for the development of electronic and flexible circuits working at microwave frequencies: flex circuits [19][20][21][22] are often adopted in computer peripherals, cellular phones, cameras, printers, and LCD fabrication.…”