Novel laser induced metallization technologies for compact antenna designs in mobile phones

A novel laser induced metallization (LIM) technologies is developed for multi-layer antenna designs in mobile phones. A special laser-activatable solution is firstly sprayed on top of the substrate, followed by laser structuring and the electroless plating. The metal patterns can be made on almost any complex surface. The substrate can be plastic, metal, glass, or ceramic. The multilayer metal patterns can be made by simply repeating the spray method on the same surface. And equivalent capacitive or inductive structures can be directly integrated with the antenna designs. In this paper, a 2G/3G/4G SMD (surface mountable device) antenna and a two-layer near-field-communication (NFC) antenna is tested by using our proposed LIM method. Acceptable impedance matching and radiation performances can be achieved for the tested WWAN/ LTE antenna within the desired operating frequencies. The read distance of the tested NFC antenna prototype reaches 3 cm.