Dry Film Photoresist-Based Microfabrication: A New Method to Fabricate Millimeter-Wave Waveguide Components

Abstract

This paper presents a novel fabrication method based on dry film photoresists to realize waveguides and waveguide-based passive components operating at the millimeter-wave frequency (30–300 GHz). We demonstrate that the proposed fabrication method has a high potential as an alternative to other microfabrication technologies, such as silicon-based and SU8-based micromachining for realizing millimeter-wave waveguide components. Along with the nearly identical transfer of geometrical structures, the dry film photoresist offers other advantages such as fewer processing steps, lower production cost, and shorter prototyping time over the conventional micromachining technologies. To demonstrate the feasibility of the fabrication process, we use SUEX dry film to fabricate a ridge gap waveguide resonator. The resonator is designed to exhibit two resonances at 234.6 and 284 GHz. The measured attenuation at 234 GHz is 0.032 dB/mm and at 283 GHz is 0.033 dB/mm for the fabricated prototype. A comparative study among different existing technologies indicates that the reported method can give a better unloaded Q-value than other conventional processes. The measured unloaded Q-values are in good agreement with the simulated unloaded Q-values. The signal attenuation indicates that SUEX dry film photoresists can be used to fabricate passive devices operating at millimeter-wave frequencies. Moreover, this new fabrication method can offer fast and low-cost prototyping.