3D Integration / Materials
Team:
Daniela Staiculescu,
Trang Thai,
Catherine Kruesi,
Li Yang,
Lara Martin
“Magic Cube” Antennas
- Thin LCP material for cube
- Low-cost: printed and then folded into three-dimensional shape
- Easily re-designable for any chip input impedance to achieve conjugate impedance matching
- Used for RFID and Wireless Sensor Node (WSN) technology
- Omnidirectional Radiation pattern
- Uses all six sides in antenna design
- Meander line structure on the cube with inductive couple allows for miniaturization of the length of each side and conjugate matching
- Planar designs can be manipulated to have similar characteristics without a directionally-specific orientation
- In certain meander line structures, dual-band performance is achieved
Fabricated Antenna
- Meander line structure on the cube with inductive couple allows for miniaturization of the length of each side and conjugate matching
- Planar designs can be manipulated to have similar characteristics without a directionally-specific orientation
- In certain meander line structures, dual-band performance is achieved
New Flexible Magnetic Composite Material
- Magnetic composite
- fabricated from 40 vol% BaCo ferrite powder in Dow Corning Sylgard 184 silicone
- produced with a mixer at 240 rpm and 110°C for 30 minutes
- 95% CI (Confidence Interval) for mean of εr, μr, tan δe and tan δm based on 5 measurements
- h (substrate thickness) = 1.3 mm
| mean | Lower CI | Upper CI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| εr | 7.124 | 7.083 | 7.201 |
| μr | 2.463 | 2.457 | 2.468 |
| tan δe | 0.0017 | 0.0005 | 0.0028 |
| tan δm | 0.0391 | 0.0358 | 0.0424 |
RFID tag on magnetic composite
- Antenna designed for UHF RFID band = 480 MHz
- Miniaturization concept proven by comparing the resonant frequency of the pure silicone design vs. composite
- Silicone fres = 6 GHz
- Composite fres = 480 MHz
- Miniaturization factor = 1.25
- For structures with ground plane even further miniaturization
Conformal performance
- Antenna bent for conformal performance analysis
- Foam cylinder 54 mm in diameter
- Slight downshift in frequency of 6 MHz
- Medical monitoring and pharma applications
