Polymer-based additive manufacturing for microwave and millimeter-wave applications

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of using various low-cost 3-D printing technologies for microwave and mm-wave applications. Different types of 3-D printers are used, and the corresponding printing and post-processing procedures are developed to design and fabricate microwave, mm-wave and quasi-optical components and subsystems. In addition, a bespoke mm-wave single-pixel camera is built for benchmarking a commercial camera, which will be used for characterizing 3-D printed quasi-optical components. Chapter 1 provides an overview of current trends in 3-D printing for microwave and mm-wave applications. A literature survey of components relevant to this dissertation is included. Chapter 2 is an overview of current polymer-based 3-D printing techniques. General information of common additive manufacturing technologies such as fused deposition modelling, vat photopolymerization and material jetting is shown in this chapter. Chapter 3 reviews details on setting-up FDM and vat photopolymerization 3-D printers. Important printing parameters such as layer thickness and build-orientation are discussed in this chapter. Also, detailed post-processing procedures used for fabricating devices described throughout this thesis are given. Finally, a methodology for setting up a safe lab-environment for 3-D printing and post-processing is presented. Chapter 4 introduces a fully 3-D printed 4-elements phased-array operating at Ku-band (12 to 18 GHz). A combination of commercial-level material jetting and a low-cost desktop FDM printer is used to fabricate the antenna body parts and dielectric phase shifters, respectively. Measured performances match well with theoretical and simulated results showing the effectiveness of using the 3-D printing for this application. Chapter 5 covers the design, fabrication and measurement process of quasi-optical components such as horn antennas, mirrors, and RAM for G-band (140 to 220 GHz) applications. In addition, A simple quasi-optical subsystem is 3-D printed to be used for integrating and testing the quasi-optical components. Chapter 6 follows up on the work from Chapter 5 and demonstrates a multi-channel subsystem that integrates various quasi-optical components. Newly customized components such as beamsplitters and convex lenses are integrated with the subsystem. Chapter 7 presents a commercial mm-wave camera benchmarking using a custom-built raster-scanning camera. The mm-wave camera is benchmarked as it is one of the most effective tools when characterizing 3-D printed quasi-optical components such as lens and mirror. The custom-built mm-wave camera will be used for future studies on characterizing or finding defects on various 3-D printed quasi-optical components.Open Acces