Enabling Technologies for Fabrication of Large Area Flexible Antennas

Flexible, foldable, and/or inflatable antenna systems open up a wealth of opportunities. Integrating antenna elements and related electronics onto flexible substrates, however, poses significant challenges. To our knowledge, there exists no technology that can incorporate a variety of electronic/sensor materials onto large-area flexible substrates to create flexible and conformable circuits in an economical and reliable way. The majority of the limitations stem from processing techniques. Mesoscribe Technologies, a high tech start-up from SUNY-Stony Brook, proposes to apply a breakthrough new direct writing technology to meet the objectives set-forth in the NASA SBIR topic S2.06 Advanced Flexible Electronics. This technology is based on revolutionary advances to modern day thermal spray materials processing enables deposition of wide range of electronic materials onto large areas at low processing temperatures and, for most part, requires no post-processing. The Phase I effort focused on demonstrating proof-of-concept to deposit conducting microstrip lines and sensors on flexible substrates. The Phase II program will be focused exclusively on developing a Direct-Write-Thermal-Spray based large-area patterning capability that is based on roll-to-roll processing to fabricate large-area antennas on flexible substrates, focusing, in particular, on JPL's L-band membrane-based active phased array radar.