Multi-material additive manufacturing of embedded low-profile antennas

A low-profile antenna that includes an integrated artificial magnetic conducting (AMC) ground plane is presented and is fully fabricated using multi-material additive manufacturing. It is shown that combining standard fused deposition modelling with conductive micro-dispensing printing enable one to realise mechanically robust antenna systems that contain spatially variable dielectric properties and intricate three-dimensional conducting networks. To illustrate this capability, a low-profile antenna is designed, fabricated, and experimentally validated, consisting of a standard 2.6 GHz half wavelength printed dipole, balun, and AMC ground plane.