Full-3D Printed Electronics Fabrication of Radiofrequency Circuits and Passive Components
- Autores: Arnau Salas Barenys
- Directores de la Tesis: José María López Villegas (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jordi Romeu Robert (presid.), Jordi Colomer Farrarons (secret.), Juan Fernando Martín Antolín (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería y Ciencias Aplicadas por la Universidad de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
This doctoral thesis raises the idea that 3D printing can change the paradigm of radiofrequency electronics. A review on additive manufacturing and the different existing technologies is reported. To focus on the concerning topic, several applications of 3Dprinted electronics in the RF field are collected to elaborate the state-of-the-art.
Once the context is exposed, a manufacturing process for 3D-printed electronics is developed, described and characterized. This technology consists of 3D printing a polymer substrate by using either stereolitography or material jetting techniques and, afterwards, partially metallizing the component or circuit through an electrolytic process, such as electroless plating or electroplating. The characterization includes the electromagnetic specifications of the dielectric substrates and the quality of the metallization, which are found to be competitive comparing to the SoA.
In order to demonstrate the possibilities of the developed technology, several devices are designed and tested. The key point is that they would be very difficult, costly or impossible to manufacture using conventional technologies. To highlight, a study on conical inductors is carried out showing the advantages of these components for broadband applications with compact devices. They are used in the manufacturing of 3D passive filters. Moreover, some 3D filters are designed as one single printed part, a new technique for 3D discrete component integration.
In addition to the lumped circuits, a whole chapter is dedicated to distributed-element devices. A study on helical-microstrip transmission lines is carried out showing an important enhancement for line segment miniaturization. Hereon, they are implemented on the design of impedance transformers, which also benefit from a bandwidth broadening, power dividers, hybrid branch-line couplers and coupled-line couplers.
