Low-cost antennas for mm-Wave sensing applications using inkjet printing of silver nano-particles on liquid crystal polymers

This paper realizes the low-cost mm-Wave antennas using inkjet printing of silver nano-particles. It is widely spread that fabrication of mm-Wave antennas and microwave circuits using the typical (deposit/pattern/etch) scheme is a challenging and costly process, due to the strict limitations on permissible tolerances. Such fabrication technique becomes even more challenging when dealing with flexible substrate materials, such as liquid crystal polymers. On the other hand, inkjet printing of conductive inks managed to form an emerging fabrication technology that has gained lots of attention over the last few years. Such process allows the deposition of conductive particles directly at the desired location on a substrate of interest, without need for mask productions, alignments, or etching. This means the inkjet printing of conductive materials could present the future of environment-friendly low-cost rapid manufacturing of RF circuits and antennas.