Printed Electronics is one of the fastest growing science and technology markets worldwide. This growth is driven by many factors including cost reduction, lead time reduction, and quicker design and test cycle times. The electronics industry as a whole stands to benefit from improvement in these factors. This thesis focuses on adding to the building blocks that enable Printed Electronics to Additively Manufacture (AM) a complete Radio Frequency (RF) system on conformal and low permittivity, porous surfaces by Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP).

The first monograph studies the electrical characteristics of AM and subtractive manufactured RF filters. AJP and a LPKF Proto U4(c) laser are used to create functional 7.5-8.0GHz, edge-coupled filters and then their scattering parameters are compared. The scattering parameters are also compared to a simulation and this comprehensive comparison helps validate AJP as a viable manufacturing technique for RF structures.

The second monograph examines the application of high conductivity silver ink by AJP onto a porous, low permittivity, syntactic foam surface. The substrate has a relative permittivity ranging from one to two and a novel method is developed to apply and cure silver ink where conductivity is only degraded by 2-3x compared to bulk silver. In addition, oven curing is compared to laser curing because laser curing can provide faster cure times and localized heating. In this monograph, laser sintered ink lines show 25% higher resistance than oven cured lines. With high quality conductors and the low permittivity substrate, this research provides a foundation for creating AM, RF, metamaterial electronics.

The third monograph examines the opportunity to create AM resistors by AJP, as resistors are important elements of RF, power attenuation circuits. This evaluation includes the application of carbon and ruthenium oxide resistors on many different surfaces. Laser curing of the AJP resistors makes it possible to create functional thick-film style resistors on low-temperature circuit card substrates for the first time. The 537O, AM resistor created by AJP is capable of handling up to 15W of continuous power without failure. This research presents a novel way of incorporating high power resistors into complex and conformal, RF designs.

In summary, this thesis presents new building blocks towards the goal of creating a complete and low cost, AM, RF system because the principles and techniques that are developed can be directly related to other passive and active RF circuit elements.