Rediscovery of Glass Materials for Millimeter-wave Wireless Communications

Over the past 30 years, as mobile communication evolved from 1G to 4G, associated technologies have become increasingly sophisticated. But the 5G era still needs more innovative solutions to meet higher level specifications. Glass materials have received a lot of attention in recent years because they have many advantages in fabricating sensitive 5G components. This paper compares various properties, between glass and incumbent materials, such as, surface roughness, fine patterning and vias, Young’s modulus, etc. Additionally, various types of Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) are introduced in this paper because FSS is a basic technology for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) applied to 5G and 6G communications. Furthermore, 6G will use higher frequency bands than 5G, so it is expected that high quality material like glass will be increasingly required.