3D Printed Zirconia for UWB Stacked Conical Ring DRA

In this paper, we present a 3D printed ultrawideband (2.95 GHz-20 GHz) dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) fabricated using Nano-Particle Jetting (NPJ) of high permittivity, low loss, mechanically tough ceramic, zirconia. 3D printing enables fabrication of geometrically complex DRA design without machining or high pressure shaping. The wideband impedance response was achieved with a hybrid monopole/DRA design that uses the fundamental and higher order modes of the monopole and the parasitic DRA rings for a wide impedance bandwidth (VSWR < 3). In the future, the 3D printing technique can enable building DRAs with more complex shapes or ceramic lattices to build graded index lenses.