Artificially engineered capacitors for discrete high frequency electronic circuitry

The concept of the artificially engineered capacitor (AEC) is presented as a 3D printable 3D capacitive component for the use in discrete RF/microwave electronic circuitry. The intention of the AEC concept is a highly customizable 3D printable component whose capacitance value is stable over a wider frequency band when compared to commercial alternatives. AECs can be viewed as impedance structures with predominantly capacitive characteristics. Both series and shunt AEC configurations are considered with simulation and measurement data along with equivalent circuit models. The tolerance of the equivalent capacitance over frequency is focused upon in this paper. Within the 40 % tolerance band from the nominal value an improvement of 26 % and 197 % frequency band was achieved for the series and shunt variants respectively when compared to a commercial alternative. Further simulations show that with finer 3D printing resolutions, this frequency stable bandwidth can be further increased. Finally, an example design application of a halfwavelength microstrip resonator is presented in which the AECs’ Q factor is measured, and the its equivalent circuits are implemented and validated via simulations and measurements.