Printed Materials and Their Effects on Quasi-Optical Millimeter Wave Guide Lens Systems

This study of 3D printed quasi-optical (Q-O) millimeter wave guide lens systems is presented in three phases: the characterization of 3D printed materials for radio frequency (RF) applications and systems; the development and demonstration of 3D printing technology for RF systems; and the design process, simulation, fabrication, and testing of RF lens systems. The first phase explores the ability to print high-quality materials with fine resolution and the determination of each material’s dielectric constant and loss tangent. The second phase details the development of dual biconvex shaped lens systems and the resulting test data. The third phase combines the former stages’ results to model, print, and test a set of lenses pre-aligned with an integrated support structure. These lens systems were tested up to 100 GHz with demonstrated focusing gain of 22.1 dB.