Studies on a Microfabricated Traveling-Wave Tube With Planar Microstrip Slow-Wave Structure

Planar microstrip slow-wave structures (SWS) for a miniaturized low-voltage traveling-wave tube (TWT) in V-, W-, and D-band are designed, fabricated and tested. The low-cost and flexible technology for fabrication of such structures based on magnetron sputtering and laser ablation is developed. The wideband input/output couplers providing low reflection loss are designed and simulated. 3-D particle-in-cell (PIC) modeling of beam-wave interaction in the V-band planar TWT predicts over 20 W saturated power.