Ceramic Additive Manufacturing for High-Performance Microwave Circuits

Abstract

The recent advances in the ceramic additive manufacturing allow to develop structures that were unobtainable before. This opens up possibilities for spatial design of antennas, filters, microwave circuits, sensors and microsystems. Simple structures had been already reported using top-level equipment. We have analyzed the possibility to obtain similar results using less expensive devices to make the technology more accessible and introduce it to the wider public. We found that the commercially-available materials have high porosity and thus high dielectric losses. Therefore, we have developed a proprietary composition which can be used with inexpensive 3D printers. It offers high density and dielectric properties very close to well-established materials. Moreover, it has lower sintering temperature than typical ceramic materials, which allows to embed conductive traces inside of the structure. This technology has a potential to expand capabilities of microwave devices, especially in high-performance space and biosensor applications. Furthermore, we have developed a method to directly print spatial transparent polymeric structures on ceramic substrates, which allows to integrate optical and microwave circuits in one device.