This study aims to demonstrate the fabrication of radio-frequency (RF) metal-insulator-metal (MIM) polyimide capacitors on a flexible Kapton ™ (polyimide film) substrate using a purely additive manufacturing technology. The aerosol jet printing technology can effectively replace the use of bulky lumped components in the RF circuits such as filters, matching networks, oscillators, resonators, and mixers. Two capacitor geometries with areas of 0.25, and 0.5625 mm2have been printed. Optical profilometry of the printed metal capacitor plates and the polyimide (insulation) film show that they have average thicknesses of $\pmb{2.34 \pm 0.22\mu} \mathbf{m}$ and $\pmb{4.05 \pm 0.44\mu} \mathbf{m}$, respectively. The measured capacitance for the set of capacitors are $\pmb{1.746\pm 0.231}\ \mathbf{pF}$ and $\pmb{2.513\pm 0.133}\mathbf{pF}$, which is equivalent to a capacitance tolerance of 10% and 5%, respectively. The S-parameters were measured using the vector network analyzer up to frequency of 50 GHz and a lumped circuit model is extracted and presented through the Smith Chart using Advanced Design System TM. Moreover, the results of normalized measured capacitance and conductance as a function of temperature, adhesion, temperature (100°C/ice bath) cycling, and the maximum operating voltage of the capacitor are presented.
Additive Manufacturing of RF Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) Capacitors on Flexible Substrate
2019-03-01
3518144 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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