Post-process fabrication of multilayer mm-wave on-package antennas with inkjet printing

This work outlines and demonstrates for the first time the utilization of inkjet printing processes for the fabrication of on-package mm-wave antenna structures. A multilayer, fully printed 30 GHz square patch antenna with a 120 μm thick dielectric substrate is fabricated directly onto an IC chip package through the use of metallic and dielectric inks. A probe station is used to measure the return loss of the fabricated on-package antenna, showing excellent agreement with simulations. This well defined process of fully additive antenna fabrication demonstrates the integrity of the inkjet printing process for on-package and on-chip antenna fabrication up to mm-wave frequency ranges.