Additive Manufactured CPW lines Cured by Intense Pulse Light for Automotive Microwave Applications

The effectiveness of direct 3D print and photonic sintering of microwave devices on automotive plastics is investigated. Co-planar waveguide (CPW) lines are printed on the automotive Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) substrate using Aerosol Jet Printer (AJP). The silver traces are photonically cured using the Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) by Pulseforge Inc. The thickness of the CPW lines is varied from 4 µm to 14 µm and they are cured using photonic pulse that varies from 250 to 300 Volts and has a duration of 10 ms. The thinner lines are more conductive than the thicker silver CPW lines and demonstrate the least insertion loss. The conductivity of the 4 µm thick CPW, cured with the 300 Volts pulse is 2.67×10
⁶
S/m. This is the maximum conductivity reached. The minimum measured conductivity is 0.34×10
⁶
S/m and belongs to the 14µm thick CPW cured with 250 Volts pulse. The insertion loss of the 4µm CPW line with the highest conductivity is 0.16 dB/mm at 20 GHz and 0.37 dB/mm at 40 GHz. The least conductive 14 µ m CPW line has an insertion loss of 0.34 dB/mm at 20 GHz and 0.55 dB/mm at 40 GHz.