Investigation of the performances of X-Ku band 3D printing pyramidal horn antennas coated with the different metals

In this study, X-Ku band 3D printed horn antennas coated with copper, chromium and nickel are designed and fabricated by means of fused deposition modelling (FDM) technique that is one of the additive manufacturing methods. Proposed fabrication method consists of two main steps that are to make the skeleton of horn antenna from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) thermoplastic via 3D printer and to perform metal plating over the all surface of antenna by using the electroless plating and then electroplating processes. The simulation and measurement results for fabricated prototype of the copper-plated horn antenna are obtained in 10-15 GHz frequency, which is suitable for satellite communications. It is investigated the performances of these antennas in terms of the gain of antenna. These results confirm that the copper-plated horn antenna has the best performance in the three antennas due to having low relative permeability and high conductivity.