A Novel Approach Toward the Integration of Fully 3-D Printed Surface-Mounted Microwave Ceramic Filters

Abstract

A first approach toward the integration of heterogeneous electronic circuit technologies and fully 3-D printed ceramic microwave devices is discussed in this work. Additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities are explored for the development of multifunction surface-mount compact components used in different RF front-ends’ scenarios. Monolithic ceramic bandpass filters (BPFs) are designed to operate in the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -Band and to assess the typical limitations of ceramic stereolithography (SLA) processes. A post-fabrication tuning method based on a laser engraving strategy is presented to overcome the manufacturing constraints and carry out the filters’ correction. 2.5-D and 3-D printed four-pole filters were fabricated and tuned using the proposed methodology.