New applications of ceramic multilayers, for example, in biotechnology, sensor technology, and chemical micro-reaction technique, call for cavities with complex geometries. Hot embossing offers a promising, cost-effective way to generate these structures on the surfaces of green tapes or laminates. Cavities inside low-temperature co-fired ceramic multilayer were manufactured by a combination of hot embossing, lamination by a special adhesive technique, and zero shrinkage sintering. The edge and surface quality in the green state as well as the sintered multilayers with surface structures and cavities were extensively characterized by laser surface scanning, optical and ultrasound microscopy. Sintering shrinkage of hot-embossed laminates could be reduced in the x and y directions to less than 0.5%.
Novel approaches of tunable devices for millimeter wave applications based on liquid crystal (LC) are presented. In the first part of the paper, a novel concept of a tunable LC phase shifter realized in Low Temperature Cofired Ceramics technology is shown while the second part of the paper deals with a tunable high-gain antenna based on an LC tunable reflectarray. The reflectarray features continuously beam scanning in between ±25°. Also first investigations on radiation hardness of LCs are carried out, indicating that LCs might be suitable for space applications.
This paper presents, the investigation of tunable components based on LTCC technology, implementing ferroelectric tunable thick-film dielectric. The tunable loaded line phase shifters are fabricated with metal-insulator-metal (MIM) varactors to demonstrate the capabilities of this method for packaging of the tunable components. The MIM varactors consist of one tunable dielectric paste layer that is printed between two silver layers. The tunable ferroelectric paste is optimized for LTCC sintering temperature around 850°C. The phase shifters are fabricated in two different process. They were achieved a figure of merit of 24°/dB (phase shift 192°) at 3 GHz and 18°/dB (phase shift 98°) at 4.4 GHz by using seven unit cells that each unit cell consisting of two MIM varactors.