Silver metallization of 77 GHz 3D printed horn antennas

This paper starts with the description of a new direct chemical plating method for silver, called the JET METAL (JMT) process. This technology is based on spraying separately an aqueous solution containing silver metallic ions together with a REACH compliant, aqueous based reducing agent. This process allows to deposit chemical silver up to twenty two micron / hour at room temperature and at ambient pressure and is already used in industrial processes for metallizing plastics, composites and non-conductive materials in general and this in different formats (3 dimensional pieces, foils, …). In the second part, results obtained with 3D printed horn antenna, metallized with the above described process are compared with standard Cu horn antennas and 3D printed electroplated horn antennas at mm-wave frequencies.