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12-12-2007FLOWPAD^3 Flexible Antenna Plating at MECO Equipment Engineers
| Submitter: | Bernard Enthoven |
| Description: | The PACMAN program is in its last stage; the design and building of a demonstrator called FLOWPAD^3. This stands for Foilbased LOW cost PAcman Differential Dualpolarized Demonstrator. It will be the first differential Vivaldi designed and built at ASTRON. The demonstrator consists of antennas, a low noise differential amplifier stage and a beamformer network. The pictures show the manufacturing of the antenna foil. On a polyester foil (50um) the pattern is printed with silver ink. With electro-chemical plating a copper layer is grown onto the silver layer. Several plating steps are required for this. At the edge of the pattern the thickness of the layer is approximately 10 um; in the middle 2 um. This is sufficient for the functionality of the antenna. The technology is called Flexible Antenna Plating and has been developed by MECO Equipment Engineers. |
| Copyright: | B.Enthoven, J.G.Bij de Vaate |
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