Laser-Assisted Additive Manufacturing of mm-Wave Lumped Passive Elements

The performance of additively manufactured microwave passive elements and interconnects continues to improve as better materials, and process techniques are developed. In this paper, laser-enhanced direct print additive manufacturing (LE-DPAM) is used to fabricate capacitors and inductors for coplanar waveguide (CPW) circuits. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene is used as the dielectric that is printed using fused deposition modeling, and DuPont CB028 conductive paste is deposited using microdispensing. These two techniques are combined with picosecond-pulsed laser machining to achieve $\simeq 12$ -$\mu \text{m}$ slots on printed conductors, producing aspect ratios greater than 2:1. The same laser is used to fabricate vertical interconnections that allow for the fabrication of multilayer inductors. Inductances in the range of 0.4-3 nH are achieved, with a maximum quality factor of 21, selfresonance frequencies up to 88 GHz, and an inductance per unit of area of 5.3 nH/mm
²
. Interdigital capacitors in the range of 0.05-0.5 pF are fabricated, having a maximum quality factor of 1000, a capacitance per unit area of 1 pF/mm
²
, and selfresonances up to 120 GHz. All the components are made on the center line of a CPW that is 836-$\mu \text{m}$ wide. The results show that LE-DPAM enables the fabrication of compact passive circuits that can be easily interconnected with MMIC dies, which at the same time can be manufactured as part of a larger component. This enables the fabrication of structural electronics that are functional into the millimeter-wave frequency range. Bounds on the inductances and capacitances per unit area are related to material and geometry limitations.