Customizing 3D-Printing for Electromagnetics to Design Enhanced RFID Antennas

This document discusses some of the advances in additive manufacturing 3D-printing for electromagnetic applications that have been investigated in the literature in the last few years. Starting from the research activity of the authors on this topic, this work summarizes and showcases the effectiveness of the 3D-printing technology in electromagnetics, with reference to UHF RFID technology. Specifically, the first part of the work deals with Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printing technique and faces the problem of the characterization of 3D-printable materials using a made-in-lab instrument based on the T-Resonator theory, which has been purposely designed to be 3D-printed. Once verified the dielectric properties of substrates realized with common 3D-printable materials, two techniques to improve their electrical permittivity are explained. Moreover, the possibility to realize fully 3D-printed RFID devices based on the use of novel 3D-printable materials with noteworthy conductive properties is discussed. Then, two new 3D-printed antennas are presented and discussed highlighting some of the advantages of 3D-printing in electromagnetics. Finally, the application in RFID of another promising 3D-printing technology called Digital Light Processing (DLP) and based on the photopolymerization of liquid resins is discussed as well.