Cost-effective experiments with additively manufactured waveguide and cavities in the S-band

Abstract

This study demonstrates the applicability of additively manufactured components that are metalized with conductive tape for two different microwave experiments. We focus on dielectric measurements and prototyping elliptical accelerator cavities at a low power regime for 2.45 GHz. To illustrate the accuracy of our results for the commonly used solid/liquid materials in engineering and to compare the fundamental accelerator cavity parameters with previous research rectangular and elliptic 3D-printed cavities coated with aluminum-type tape were employed in the experiments. Results reported for the complex-valued permittivities and specific design parameters for the cavity prototype are consistent with the literature. Various approaches to obtain the conductivity value of the tape and the effect of the roughness/thickness of the coating on the reflection parameter are discussed in detail. We confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which reduces costs and provides a high degree of accuracy for investigated applications.