Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Printed electronics (PE) differs from conventional subtractive (eg. etching) fabrication methods and is insteadx000D
one of a number of methods to fabricate circuits/devices by additively depositing conducting or dielectricx000D
(insulating) material. These include traditional printing methods like flexography, and more recently developedx000D
techniques like aerosol-jet printing. PE methods offer lower fabrication costs and are suited to flexiblex000D
substrates. They have not yet found widespread use at high wireless communications (RF) frequencies. Thex000D
reason is this : RF circuits are usually comprised of conducting metallic patterns printed on dielectricx000D
substrates. Subtractive fabrication methods are suited to produce conducting tracks as single thick (relativelyx000D
speaking) conducting layers. But no matter how thick the conductor is, the so-called electromagnetic skin effectx000D
results in the current flowing within a thin layer of the conductor. Thus the effective resistance (and hencex000D
unwanted power losses) is larger than it could be if the current could be made to spread over a larger crossx000D
section of the conducting track. How this can be achieved was in fact shown in 1951, namely that instead of ax000D
single conducting layer one should use laminated conductors comprised of very thin conducting layersx000D
separated by extremely thin dielectric material, of just the correct thicknesses. Electromagnetic fieldx000D
penetration of this laminated conductor can then be many skin depths thick and the currents will as a resultx000D
flow over larger portions of the available conductor cross-sections. This results in greatly decreased powerx000D
losses. But subtractive fabrication methods are not suited to making laminated conductor circuits. This researchx000D
will use computational electromagnetics analysis to design laminated conductor circuits, and PE flexography tox000D
fabricate them in an effort to start making PE fabrication methods available for RF circuits. One possiblex000D
application is by a Canadian company developing one of the world's first fully integrated advanced headx000D
protection solutions for security and military personnel.