3-D printed X-band Yagi-Uda antenna

Abstract

This paper presents a quarter wavelength monopole driven X-band Yagi-Uda antenna manufactured with three dimensional (3-D) printing technology. By applying image theory, only half part of conventional Yagi-Uda antenna needs to be printed to obtain equivalent performance. Since the feeding element, reflector and directors of 3-D Yagi-Uda antenna in this paper are all vertically placed pillars, substrate effects are eliminated with enabled advantage of substrate independence. In order to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed idea, high performance Yagi-Uda antenna is implemented following classic design guidelines, and optimized dimensions are generated with ANSYS HFSS 15.0 simulation. Co-planar waveguide (CPW) feeding line is patterned first with pre-deposited 200 nm thick gold on silicon wafer. Antenna is formed with 3-D printed SU-8 pillars on top of substrate and metallized by DC sputtering method. The printed antenna is characterized using R&S ZVA67 vector network analyzer and good agreement has obtained between simulation and measurement results.