Inkjet Printed Conductive Pattern and Closed Loop Flash Sintering for Microstrip Antenna

Aiming at the fabrication of conformal microstrip antennas, a five-axis motion printing system is proposed to realize the printing of conductive patterns on non-expanded surfaces, which converts complex spatial three-dimensional printing into easier two-dimensional printing. The closed-loop sintering system using CCD sensor feedback performs short-time sintering of the conductive pattern to show the conductive performance of the conductive pattern. The temperature after sintering is lower than 70 °C, Some non-high temperature resistant materials can be used as substrates and obtain conductive patterns with a resistivity of 13 μΩ cm. This method is used to fabricate a 4 × 2 conformal array microstrip antenna with a return loss of −23.03 dB at a design center frequency of 13 Ghz. The main and side lobes of the electric and magnetic fields in the pattern measured in the microwave darkroom has the same trend with the simulation result. Verification of the effectiveness of this production method was verified.