Broadband and Accurate Material Characterization of 3D Manufactured RF Structures

Abstract

3D additive printing have been employed recently for manufacturing a wide variety of Radio Frequency (RF) components on planar and conformal structures. The design and modeling step requires an accurate electromagnetic (EM) characterization of the 3D printed dielectric material at RF frequencies. The broadband and accurate material extraction techniques are based on best fitting of simulated to measured scattering (S) parameters. The simulation is based on Finite Element Method (FEM) solver for full-wave electromagnetic fields and the measurement was obtained through network analyzer for microstrip transmission lines (TL) and annular ring (AR) resonators. An initial broadband characterization utilizing a transmission line of three different lengths are initially modeled and fabricated on unknown 3D printed substrate and compared to known RT/Duroid substrate for error analysis. A higher accuracy narrowband characterization is achieved with best fitting process of enclosed annular ring resonators realized at 2.4 and 5.4GHz.