Laser surface smoothing and Infrared sintering of additively
manufactured High-Frequency components
Abstract
In this paper a method of Laser surface smoothing of 3D printed polymer
material based on a nanosecond Laser is introduced. The adequate Laser
enabled reducing surface roughness by 65% on a 25x25 mm² surface and
therefore improving the printing quality of metal layer deposited on top
to fabricate HF passive devices. This paper also examines the impact of
Infrared (IR) sintering combined with thermal treatment in order to
improve the electrical conductivity of printed silver layers by micro
dispensing technique (nScrypt technology) up to 30.5 S/µm. A patch
antenna was printed on smoothed PEEK substrate and gave promising
results (gain of 5.4 dBi @ 6.8 GHz).