This paper presents a few single-substrate multi-metal layer antennas using additively manufactured electronics (AME) solution based on piezoelectric additive fabrication. By vertically stacking metal layers in a 3D printed single substrate, the designed antenna prototype exhibits the advantages of wide bandwidth and ultra-low profile.
For proof-of-concept, multi-layer linear polarization (LP) patch antenna elements and 2 x 2 LP antenna arrays are designed, fabricated, and measured. It verifies that the feeding network can be integrated into the same substrate of the antenna array element without increasing the size and profile of the array. Compared with the traditional single-layer LP patch antenna, the proposed LP patch
antenna can improve the impedance bandwidth from 5.9% to 10.6% (three layers) and 83% (seven layers), respectively. All these designs can be fabricated in a single substrate with a thickness of 1.5 mm, which is an ideal solution for the applications where ultra-low profile and wideband patch antenna
are expected.
(Published by IEEE, Nov 2021)
