Aerosol-Jet Printed Transferable Millimeter-Wave Circuits

Printed millimeter-wave (mmW) electronics have been of high interest in the field of communications for some time now due to the potential ability to fabricate mmW systems that utilize 3-D heterogeneous integration (3DHI) to improve performance beyond traditional systems. In this article, a method for fabricating transferable mmW structures via aerosol-jet printing (AJP) is presented. A polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp-assisted liftoff procedure is developed to separate the printed part from a rigid printing support surface and apply it to an adhesive target surface. Several microstrip (MS) line structures are demonstrated to characterize the effect of stamp transfer on the RF performance of the printed circuits. The effects of printed vias on RF probe pads and shifts in the resonant frequencies of a Beatty standard line after transfer are considered and characterized using S-parameter measurements.