Lattice modes paving the way to printable efficient antennas

This paper presents the behaviour of a directive antenna that exploits the Bloch wave of a mixed lattice of dielectric and metallic cylinders. The peek, an insulator with low relative permittivity and relatively high loss tangent, is used to demonstrate how periodic structures can be designed and realized to efficiently improve the performance of simple radiators by means of low-cost materials. Peek electromagnetic properties are indeed similar to those of materials commonly employed by 3-D additive printing techniques, and a little power is dissipated in dielectric cylinders by the Bloch wave to be excited. The latter spatially filters the radiation on the lattice plane and its excitation is achieved more selectively by placing metallic cylinders among dielectric ones on the basis of the E-field pattern of the operational Bloch wave. An antenna prototype based on aforementioned mechanisms has been built and successfully tested.