Multi-material Additive Manufacturing of RF Electronics

To reduce size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-c) military platforms have been evolving towards a more integrated design approach that efficiently utilizes all available space.To accommodate limited space constraints many commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems will need to be replaced by custom designed and fabricated components.For the case of radiofrequency (RF) electronic systems this will require exploring new design methods, new materials as well as novel manufacturing approaches to fabricate cost-effective, customizable and conformal RF devices that do not rely on standard COTS technologies.The field of additive manufacturing (AM) is potentially an attractive solution to this challenge.For this Phase I effort, we propose a multi-material based AM approach for fabrication of complex integrated RF systems using a single machine.An nScrypt 3-Dx-300 multi-material printer will be our principal AM system used to fabricate prototypes that include passive transmission lines, RF filters and antennas.Particular emphasis will be placed on high frequency characterization of materials, development of computational models and fabrication proof-of-concept prototypes.