Electrical characterization of a microstrip line patterned by electrohydrodynamic jet printing of silver nanoparticles

Direct write technologies on circuits of printed circuit boards are attractive since the circuit pattern can be altered and manufactured almost instantaneously. In this article, microstrip lines were patterned by using electrohydrodynamic jet printing of silver nanoparticles as one type of direct write technologies. Characteristic impedance and insertion loss of a microstrip line were measured. The characteristic impedance was about 23 Ω, which agreed well with the calculated value of 21Ω. The insertion loss was below 3 dB for frequencies below 1.8 GHz. This article demonstrated the possibility of using electrohydrodynamic jet printing of silver nanoparticles to obtain microstrip lines on circuit boards.