High-Resolution Printed Copper Antennas for Flexible mm Wave Electronics

In this talk, we present the first report of flexible mm Wave antennas additively manufactured via screen printing with copper conductive inks on alumina. Antennas, such as straight dipoles, meandering dipoles, and circular disk monopoles, are designed for operation at 24 GHz and then manufactured on a variety of flexible substrates, namely, polyimide, glass, and alumina ribbon ceramics. A resolution of 50 um width and spacing was obtained at a printing speed of 10000 sq mm/s. Antenna’s return loss and antenna pattern were measured and found to be in agreement with simulation. Preliminary results of future work, including integration and packaging with bare die chipsets are also shared.