A novel integrated dielectric-and-conductive ink 3D printing technique for fabrication of microwave devices

In this work a novel combination of printed electronics using conductive nanoparticle ink together with 3D printing of dielectric material is presented as one integrated process. This allows fabrication of complicated 3D electromagnetic (EM) structures such as wide range of different antennas and microwave devices to simultaneously include printing of conductive nanoparticle ink within 3D dielectric configurations. Characterization of conductive ink and polymer based substrate has been done to ensure proper RF, electric, thermal and mechanical performance of both substrate and the ink. A meander line dipole antenna on a V-shaped substrate is printed and tested to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of proposed technique. The goal in this paper is to provide a low cost, environmentally friendly integrated process for the fabrication of geometrically complicated 3D electromagnetic structures.