Direct printing of flexible metallic millimetre-wave frequency selective surfaces

The FSS discussed in this letter are printed using ΠMAK aluminium conductive ribbon of 0.425μm metallization thickness, onto Flexcon TC390 substrate, which consists of a 50μm top layer of polyester, an acrylic adhesive layer of 20μm, and a 56μm glassine release liner, which is removed for testing. The thermal transfer printer used was a Zebra S4M with 300dpi (12 dots per mm) resolution, with maximum label width of 10.16cm and a maximum length of 185.4cm. The conductivity of the metallization was measured using the Van der Pauw method, with a four probe technique, and the metallization printed in a clover leaf configuration. For the 0.425μm thick aluminum ribbon the bulk conductivity was found to be 2.5 x 107 S/m.