Polymer micro hot embossing for the fabrication of three-dimensional millimeter-wave components

This paper presents polymer hot embossing, a polymer processing technique used to fabricate a millimeter-wave four-port hybrid ring waveguide power divider/combiner. The hybrid ring is divided into a two-part assembly and fabricated using polymeric materials. The polymer waveguide ring is then electroplated and placed into metallic fixtures with flanges designed to fit the standard coax-to rectangular waveguide adaptors WR-15 for test and measurement. A comparison between simulated and measured data shows that the performance of the polymer based hybrid ring resembles that of a metallic hybrid ring with minimal degradation, which may be due metallization non-uniformity.