220-320 GHz Hemispherical Lens Antennas Using Digital Light Processed Photopolymers

Abstract

This paper presents a 220-320-GHz hemispherical lens antenna fabricated using photopolymer-based additive manufacture and directly fed by the standard WR-3 rectangular waveguide without any additional waveguide extension. The microfabrication process is based on digital light processing rapid prototyping using the Monocure 3DR3582C resin-based photocurable polymer. This gives various key advantages, including ease of antenna fabrication, manufacturing speed, and cost-effectiveness due to its rapid fabrication capability. Even though the photopolymer is found to have a loss tangent of 0.034 at 320 GHz, the all-polymer lens antennas still achieve a fractional bandwidth of 37%, covering the whole 220-320-GHz WR-3 waveguide band with a measured gain of approximately 16 dBi at 0 • over the whole band. A measured return loss of better than 14 dB is achieved from 220 to 320 GHz with a half-power beamwidth of approximately 12 • , which is relatively constant over the whole WR-3 band. INDEX TERMS Lens antenna, digital light processing, terahertz antennas.

Three‐dimensional printing technologies for terahertz applications: A review

“…3D‐printed technologies for THz quasi‐optical components: A, measured frequency dependent spot size and FWHM for two FDM‐printed plano‐convex spherical lenses made of polystyrene; B, Fresnel, fractal, and Fibonacci THz diffractive lens (from top to bottom), fabricated by SLS with nylon polyamide granular powders (left), and measured THz irradiance at the plane of the lens (right); C, hemispherical lens antenna fabricated using DLP with Monocure 3DR3582C polymer, mounted on the WR‐3 waveguide flange; D, circularly polarized (CP) modified Fresnel lens and anisotropic metamaterial polarizer fabricated using SLA. 3D, three‐dimensional; DLP, digital light processing; FDM, fused deposition modeling; SLA, stereolithography apparatus; SLS, selective laser sintering; THz, terahertz…”

“…Recently, a WR‐3 band (220‐320 GHz) hemispherical lens antenna, fabricated using DLP technique with the Monocure 3DR3582C resin‐based photocurable polymer, was demonstrated by Chudpooti et al, as shown in Figure C. The dielectric constant of the photopolymer exhibits constant variation from 2.85 to 2.86 and the loss tangent increases from 0.025 to 0.033 over the WR‐3 band.…”

An X-band Portable 3D-printed Lens Antenna with Integrated Waveguide Feed for Microwave Imaging

“…The geometry of the proposed lens antenna composed of two sections. The first section is part for wave propagation of the antenna, which consists of the lens radius, R, and extension length of the lens antenna, L. In this work, the lens radius and extension length of the hemispherical lens antenna are fixed to ratio between the extension length and lens radius (L/R) of 1, which were investigated in [11]. The second section of the proposed lens is taper transition, which composed of chamfer angle, θ, taper height, T H , taper width, T W , and taper length, T L .…”

BaSrTiO 3 ceramic‐polymer composite material lens antennas at 220–330 GHz telecommunication applications

“…Optical [1 ] and electrical [2 ] principles are alternatives for processing signal modulation in sub‐THz radio devices. However, both principles need either large antenna arrays [3 ] or lens antenna [4 ] structures on the air interface. Most of the presented lens antennas are build conventional high resistivity silicon [2, 4 ] or pure polymer materials [5–13 ] where typically lens material shapes, small details or macroscopic porosity are controlled by various fabrication methods.…”