3D-Printed Low-Profile Single-Substrate Multi-Metal Layer Antennas and Array With Bandwidth Enhancement

Abstract

This paper presents a few single-substrate multi-metal layer antennas using additively manufactured electronics (AME) solution based on piezoelectric additive fabrication. By vertically stacking metal layers in a 3D printed single substrate, the designed antenna prototype exhibits the advantages of wide bandwidth and ultra-low profile. For proof-of-concept, multi-layer linear polarization (LP) patch antenna elements and 2 × 2 LP antenna arrays are designed, fabricated, and measured. It verifies that the feeding network can be integrated into the same substrate of the antenna array element without increasing the size and profile of the array. Compared with the traditional single-layer LP patch antenna, the proposed LP patch antenna can improve the impedance bandwidth from 5.9% to 10.6% (three layers) and 83% (seven layers), respectively. All these designs can be fabricated in a single substrate with a thickness of 1.5 mm (0.031 λg), which is an ideal solution for the applications where ultra-low profile and wideband patch antenna are expected. Finally, circular polarization (CP) patch antenna elements and 2 × 2 CP antenna arrays are fabricated and measured. Good agreements between the simulated and the measured results verify that wider impedance bandwidth and broader frequency range of under 3-dB axial ratio can be obtained by vertically stacking metal layers. The antennas are designed at sub-6GHz, which have great potentials for 5G consumer mobile electronics.