Additive Integration with Aerosol-Jet Printed SIWs

This paper introduces one of the first investigations of a fully additively manufactured Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW). This concept presents a unique combination of integrability and performance benefits while simplifying assembly and reducing size, cost, and waste. However, most of the works reported to date have been additive reproductions of conventional post-wall SIW and have not attempted to fully leverage additive capabilities in realizing new designs. Here, we apply an aerosol-jet printing process in the deposition of dielectrics and conductors for fully additive SIW with continuous sidewalls. Samples are printed on both planar and conformal substrates, and a design is proposed which additively integrates these SIWs with a bare die Low Noise Amplifier (LNA). The advantages and limitations of this paradigm will be explored in detail to determine the feasibility of this platform relative to comparable methods.