3D Conductive Polymer Printed Metasurface Antenna for Fresnel Focusing

TL;DR

This paper presents a fully 3D printed holographic metasurface antenna operating at 10 GHz, demonstrating high-fidelity beam focusing and highlighting the impact of material conductivity on performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 3D printing method for fabricating a holographic metasurface antenna with conductive polymer, eliminating the need for post-processing techniques.

Findings

High-fidelity beam focusing achieved within the Fresnel region.

Material conductivity significantly affects radiation characteristics.

The entire antenna is printed in a single process without additional fabrication steps.

Abstract

We demonstrate a 3D printed holographic metasurface antenna for beam-focusing applications at 10 GHz within the X-band frequency regime. The metasurface antenna is printed using a dual-material 3D printer leveraging a biodegradable conductive polymer material (Electrifi) to print the conductive parts and polylactic acid (PLA) to print the dielectric substrate. The entire metasurface antenna is 3D printed at once; no additional techniques, such as metal-plating and laser etching, are required. It is demonstrated that using the 3D printed conductive polymer metasurface antenna, high-fidelity beam focusing can be achieved within the Fresnel region of the antenna. It is also shown that the material conductivity for 3D printing has a substantial effect on the radiation characteristics of the metasurface antenna.