3D-Printed Low-Profile X-Band Tunable Phase Shifter

Abstract

A novel 3D printed X-band tunable phase shifter is presented in this paper. By using the low temperature (140 °C) additively manufactured (AM) method, a multilayer conductive structure within a single dielectric substrate is realized by simultaneously jetting both dielectric and conductive inks. Taking advantage of this inkjet printing technology, a tunable phase shifter operating at X - band is proposed and designed. Within 90° continuous phase tuning range, a low insertion loss variation can be achieved with very compact size 0.22 × 0.12 × 0.1 (λg3). To verify proposed design concept, a prototype parallel strip line tunable phase shifter working at 9 GHz is designed, fabricated, and measured, where the measurement results agree well with EM simulations and design theory.