Ferromagnetic Nanocomposites for Efficient Integration of Microwave and Millimeter Wave Devices and Systems

In typical MIMIC circuits and systems, the passive circuitry occupies more than ten times the area occupied by the active circuitry. Attempts have been made to reduce the area required for passive circuits by using "slow-wave" structures. However this results in high loss, and low impedance structures. Foster-Miller recently developed room-temperature ferromagnetic polymer composites which can be combined with "slow-wave" structures to reduce the size of the passive components by a factor of twenty. The materials developed by Foster-Miller have good magnetic properties, are thermally stable and can be processed by techniques prevalent in the integrated circuit and multichip module industry. More importantly, these slow-wave structures can be used to develop highly compact, multilayer, multiconductor RF substrates for integrating analog, and digital ICs as well as planar antennas for phased array applications. In Phase I, Foster-Miller will work with Honeywell to characterize the ferromagnetic polymer composites in the 0.5 to 40 GHz frequency range, and demonstrate that 20X reduce in component size can be achieved. In Phase II, Foster-Miller will demonstrate that highly compact MMICs and array elements can be fabricated with these novel structures.