Ultra-wideband microwave components fabricated using low-cost aerosol-jet printing technology

In this paper, ultra-wideband RF/Microwave components fabricated using a low-cost aerosol-jet printing technology are demonstrated on a 50 μm thick Kapton film. The demonstrated RF/Microwave components include a four-stage Wilkinson power divider and a novel planar quad Archimedean spiral true-time delay line. The printed power divider has achieved a bandwidth of 2 to 20 GHz with typical 2 dB insertion loss, greater than 25 dB return loss, and better than 25 dB isolation performance across the majority of the band. The printed delay line has demonstrated 2 ns true time delay with excellent delay flatness across the entire band. The performances of the printed RF/Microwave components are comparable to those of semiconductor based monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC).