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Which? Substrate - RF Cafe Forums
Because of the high maintenance needed to monitor and filter spammers from the RF Cafe Forums, I decided that it would be best to just archive the pages to make all the good information posted in the past available for review. It is unfortunate that the scumbags of the world ruin an otherwise useful venue for people wanting to exchanged useful ideas and views. It seems that the more formal social media like Facebook pretty much dominate this kind of venue anymore anyway, so if you would like to post something on RF Cafe's Facebook page, please do.

Below are all of the forum threads, including all the responses to the original posts.


Role
 Post subject: Which? Substrate
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:01 pm 
Hello,
Please please could someone please suggest an ideal substrate to use on a single element microstrip patch for wireless-LAN applications, resonating at about 2.44Ghz and also why its ideal.

I also want to play with two-element stacked microstrip patch antennas and was hoping someone could tell me wat the common substrates for this are. Low cost substrate is a primary factor in both cases. Thank you so much.


 
  
 
Johnny
 Post subject:
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:20 pm 
FR-4 is used almost exclusively, and is very inexpensive. Check with any of the board fab houses. A couple advertise on RF Cafe (no, I'm not one of them). From a quick look here are the ones I see (might as well support them since they essentially pay for this website). Sorry if I missed a couple. I think they all specialize in quick turn-around and even small quantities.

Electronic Prototypes
http://www.electronicprototypes.com/

Procyon PCB
http://www.procyonpcb.com/

American Standard Circuits
http://www.asc-i.com/

Gator CAD
http://www.gatorcad.com/


Johnny G. in beautiful Wisconsin


 
  
 
Guest
 Post subject:
Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:00 am 
If use FR4 for a patch antenna you will be very dissapointed in the results. FR4 material is a cheaply made material that has loosely held tolerances for dielectric constants and losses. You need to use a microwave material like Rogers 5880.


 
  
 
jives
 Post subject:
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:19 am 
 
Lieutenant

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:18 pm
Posts: 3
It also depends on the bandwidth you want and the physical size you're looking for. I would recommend Rogers 5880 or Rogers 6010 duroid, though they aren't very cheap in terms of cost. If you're doing this as part of a university research project, you may be able to have them give you some free samples which will be large enough to fabricate the antenna. (Actually, I've done this before and they were very accomodating).


 
   
 
Karthik
 Post subject:
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:32 pm 
Hi,

FR4 may not be the best material to use. You would find that the efficiency of the antenna would be low compared to other substrates like Rogers 5880 if both the feed network and the patch are on FR4. If you are trying something like an aperture coupled patch, then, you could have the feed strucuture on a lower loss material and the patch/radiating element on FR4, though this would just be complicating the design.



Posted  11/12/2012

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