3d Printing Designs For Antennas

Special Issue "3D-Printed RF Devices and Antennas"

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. William Whittow
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Interests: 3D printing; antennas; artificial dielectrics; dielectric property measurements; embroidered antennas; energy harvesting; heterogeneous substrates; implanted antennas; inkjet printing; metamaterials; metasurfaces; RFID tags; specific absorption rates (SAR); wearable antennas
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Shiyu Zhang
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Research Fellow, Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Interests: antennas; lens antennas; 3D-printed antennas; wearable antennas; metamaterials

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We live in a wireless world where there are constant pressures to make our communication systems lighter, smaller, cheaper, more efficient, have multiband or wide response, and be more intelligent. One topical area in addressing these challenges is the use of additive manufacturing, which can allow the creation of external and internal shapes that are difficult to replicate using traditional techniques. These extra degrees of freedom allow antenna and RF designers to imagine new structures. In this Special Issue, we invite you to submit papers relating to: 3D-printed antennas, devices, and metamaterials; new material compositions and formulations; and new techniques for additively manufacturing structures including printing multiple materials.

Dr. William Whittow
Dr. Shiyu Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Designs is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

3D printing
antennas
RF devices
metamaterials
artificial dielectrics
lenses
materials
graded materials

Published Papers (4 papers)

Research

Open Access Article

The Impact of 3D Printing Process Parameters on the Dielectric Properties of High Permittivity Composites

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1416

Abstract

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a well-known and greatly accessible additive manufacturing technology, that has found great use in the prototyping and manufacture of radiofrequency componentry, by using a range of composite thermoplastic materials that possess superior properties, when compared to standard materials for 3D printing. However, due to their nature and synthesis, they are often a great challenge to print successfully which in turn affects their microwave properties. Hence, determining the optimum printing strategy and settings is important to advance this area. The manufacturing study presented in this paper shows the impact of the main process parameters: printing speed, hatch spacing, layer height and material infill, during 3D printing on the relative permittivity (ε_r ), and loss tangent (tanδ) of the resultant additively manufactured test samples. A combination of process parameters arising from this study, allowed successful 3D printing of test samples, that marked a relative permittivity of 9.06 ± 0.09 and dielectric loss of 0.032 ± 0.003. Full article

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Open Access Article

Evaluation of Microwave Characterization Methods for Additively Manufactured Materials

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 1559

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) has become more important and common in recent years. Advantages of AM include the ability to rapidly design and fabricate samples much faster than traditional manufacturing processes and to create complex internal geometries. Materials are crucial components of microwave systems and proper and accurate measurement of their dielectric properties is important to aid a high level of accuracy in design. There are numerous measurement techniques and finding the most appropriate method is important and requires consideration of all different factors and limitations. One limitation of sample preparation is that the sample size needs to fit in the measurement method. By utilizing the advantage of additive manufacturing, the material can be characterized using different measurement methods. In this paper, the additive manufacturing process and dielectric measurement methods have been critically reviewed. The test specimens for measuring dielectric properties were fabricated using fused filament fabrication (FFF)-based additive manufacturing and were measured using four different commercial dielectric properties measurement instruments including split post dielectric resonator (SPDR), rectangular waveguide, TE_01δ cavity resonator, and open resonator. The measured results from the four techniques have been compared and have shown reasonable agreement with measurements within a 10 percent range. Full article

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Open Access Article

3D Conductive Polymer Printed Metasurface Antenna for Fresnel Focusing

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1559

Abstract

We demonstrate a 3D printed holographic metasurface antenna for beam-focusing applications at 10 GHz within the X-band frequency regime. The metasurface antenna is printed using a dual-material 3D printer leveraging a biodegradable conductive polymer material (Electrifi) to print the conductive parts and polylactic acid (PLA) to print the dielectric substrate. The entire metasurface antenna is 3D printed at once; no additional techniques, such as metal-plating and laser etching, are required. It is demonstrated that using the 3D printed conductive polymer metasurface, high-fidelity beam focusing can be achieved within the Fresnel region of the antenna. It is also shown that the material conductivity for 3D printing has a substantial effect on the radiation characteristics of the metasurface antenna. Full article

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Open Access Article

3D Printed Radar Lenses with Anti-Reflective Structures

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2017

Abstract

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine if 3D printed lenses with wavelength specific anti-reflective (AR) surface structures would improve beam intensity and thus radar efficiency for a Printed Circuit Board (PCB)-based 60 GHz radar. This would have potential for improved low-cost radar lenses for the consumer product market. Methods: A hyperbolic lens was designed in 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) software and was then modified with a wavelength specified AR structure. Electromagnetic computer simulation was performed on both the 'smooth' and 'AR structure' lenses and compared to actual 60 GHz radar measurements of 3D printed polylactic acid (PLA) lenses. Results: The simulation results showed an increase of 10% in signal intensity of the AR structure lens over the smooth lens. Actual measurement showed an 8% increase in signal of the AR structure lens over the smooth lens. Conclusions: Low cost and readily available Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing has been shown to be capable of printing an AR structure coated hyperbolic lens for millimeter wavelength radar applications. These 3D Printed AR structure lenses are effective in improving radar measurements over non-AR structure lenses. Full article

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