Development of Liquid Crystal Display Printed Antennas for Millimeter-Wave Applications

Liquid crystal display (LCD) printing technique has been widely used in developing various antenna devices. As the inherent dielectric properties of the resin, such as the permittivity, it may limit the option of practical solutions. To broaden the use of commercial UV resin in antenna designs, we propose an easy way to increase the permittivity of the original cured resin by adding the Al2O3 to the uncured liquid resin. Measurement results show that the modified permittivity of such a printable composite can be increased from 2.8 to 4.4 at 24 GHz. In terms of the antenna applications, we show four antenna designs, including horn, rod, and lens antennas fabricated by LCD printing and the modified resin. Simulation and measurement results confirm that the proposed method offers a good platform for bringing superior radiation performance together with low-cost fabrication compared with typical antennas.