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Design of Broadband Low-profile Transmitarrays at Ka-band with High-Permittivity 3D-printed Materials

Cai, Y. ; Matos, S.A. ; Mei, P. ; Felício, J. M. ; Fernandes, C. A. ; Costa, J.R. ; Zhang, S.

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation Vol. 73, Nº 11, pp. 8972 - 8980, November, 2025.

ISSN (print): 0018-926X
ISSN (online): 1558-2221

Scimago Journal Ranking: 1,72 (in 2024)

Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TAP.2025.3597360

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Abstract
Transmitarrays (TAs) are a cost-effective solution for millimeter-wave antenna applications. The widespread use of fully dielectric TAs (DTAs) emerges from the manufacturing simplicity brought by 3D printing. Previously reported DTAs employ readily available low-permittivity materials (εr λ0), affecting the DTA performance compared with thinner TA based on printed-circuit-board (PCB) technology. This work shows that, when properly crafted, 3D-printed high-permittivity dielectric (HPD) materials can solve this problem. The design challenge is to circumvent the free-space mismatch and narrowband responses usually associated with HPD materials. A commercially available HPD material compatible with 3D printing is used as an example to demonstrate the feasibility of this type of DTA. This study includes the in-house material characterization for the designed frequency (εr = 13.1 at 30 GHz). A HPD TA is benchmarked against a conventional PCB-based TA for evaluating the impact of HPD materials for the design of this type of TA. A HPD TA with a diameter of 14 λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength at 30 GHz in free space) and a height of 0.4 λ0 (excluding the feed horn) is fabricated with the low-cost 3D printing method of fuse deposition modeling (FDM). When illuminated by a standard horn, the HPD TA antenna provides a 27.4 dBi gain, elevation scanning up to 45 degrees (through the horizontal displacement of the feed horn) with a scan loss of 2 dB and a 1-dB gain bandwidth of 16.3%.