Laser Enhanced Direct-Print Additive Manufacturing (LE-DPAM) of mm-Wave Antenna using LTCC Dielectric Paste for High Temperature Applications

Abstract

The laser-enhanced direct print additive manufacturing (LE-DPAM) process is used to fabricate and characterize low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) paste for high temperature applications. Coplanar waveguides (CPW) were used to characterize the performance of the additive manufactured LTCC substrate and the permittivity is extracted using direct S-parameters measurements up to 40 GHz. The extracted permittivity is calculated to be an average of 21.3 over 1–40 GHz. A 4 dBi mm-wave antenna is designed and fabricated to demonstrate the capability to additive manufacture LTCC materials, with resonances in the 32–34 GHz range which endured at temperatures up to 980 °C. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first fully additive manufactured solution for LTCC technology, where both LTCC and conductive traces were printed using a microdispensing AM process.