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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of material properties and fabrication technique on the performance of an embedded pressure sensor. Based on conducted theoretical analysis a suitable material and technological technique that gave the best behavior of designed sensor was chosen for its fabrication. This is verified on the example of a resonant pressure sensor, designed for operation in the MHz range.

A sensor module is fabricated using the low temperature co‐fired ceramics (LTCC) technology and sputtering technique for electrodes deposition. The module comprises an inductor connected with a variable capacitor formed by the sensor membranes in a parallel LC circuit. An extensive parallel analysis of sensors performance for sensors with thick film (screen‐printed) and thin film (sputtered) electrodes is demonstrated. Mechanical and electrical parameters (Young's modulus and permittivity) of different tape materials that are considered for sensor fabrication are determined at room temperature.

Implementation of the sputtering technique for deposition of the thin film electrodes and usage of tapes with higher elasticity significantly contribute to the increase of the sensor performance (improved sensitivity) compared to designs found in available literature. Experimentally attained results are compared with the ones obtained by analytical calculations achieving good agreement of obtained results.

The improvement of sensor sensitivity by means of evaluation of different tape material and electrode thickness reduction is demonstrated for the first time. The presented results of the sensor equivalent model and the sensor‐antenna system are in good compliance with experimental data determined through measurement.

This paper presents performance comparison of RF inductors with the same lateral geometry applying different substrate configurations. The purpose of presented research is to demonstrate and verify some advantages of low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology in comparison to printed circuit board (PCB) technology based on the performance analysis of presented inductors in lower RF range.

The presented inductors are meander structures fabricated in LTCC and PCB technology, with same line width and outer dimensions. Performance analysis of all configurations is based on measurement results and numerical simulations. Advantage of LTCC technology is demonstrated by application of substrate pattering in order to maintain and/or improve expected inductor performances.

As expected, obtained results for the inductor with an air-gap show increase of the quality factor over 30 percent and widening of the operating frequency range by 50 percent when compared with the same LTCC structure without a gap. But what is more important the inductor with air-gap embedded inside LTCC stack maintains efficiency when compared to PCB inductor. This fact offers possibility of integration good quality components inside LTCC stack and reduction of used chip space.

Advantages of LTCC with respect to PCB design are demonstrated by efficiency increase of the proposed inductor configurations by means of design optimization relying on substrate pattering and incensement of the packaging density by embedding inductors. The presented findings are verified through consistency of measurement results and simulated data.

Significant achievements in ferrite material processing enable developments of many ferrite devices with a wide range of power levels and working frequencies, which make demands for new characterization and modelling methods for ferrite materials and components. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a modelling and measurement procedure, which can be used for the characterization of two‐port ferrite components in high frequency range.

This paper presents a commercially available ferrite component (transformer) modelling and determination of its electrical parameters using in‐house developed software. The components are measured and characterized using a vector network analyzer E5071B and adaptation test fixture on PCB board. The parameters of electrical equivalent circuit of the ferrite transformer parameters are compared with values extracted out of measured scattering parameters.

A good agreement between modelled and extracted electrical parameters of the ferrite transformer is found. The modelled inductance curves have the same dependence versus frequency as extracted ones. That confirms the model validity in the wide frequency range.

In‐house developed software based on proposed model provides inclusion of the ferrite material dispersive characteristics, which dominantly determines high‐frequency behaviour of two‐port ferrite components. Developed software enables fast and accurate calculation of the ferrite transformer electrical parameters and its redesign in order to achieve the best performance for required application.

This paper aims to present combination of poly-jet technology and ink-jet technology in a multidisciplinary way in order to exploit advantages of these rapid prototyping techniques in manufacturing a demonstrator device – a variable interdigital capacitor.

The platform of 3D complex geometry, with optimized design and cavity under the capacitor's fingers (plates), was fabricated using Alaris 3D printer, whereas silver conductive segments were fabricated using Dimatix ink-jet printer and thanks to the mechanical flexibility the platform has been covered using these segments.

When one side of the capacitor's structure changes angular position (in the range from 0 to 90°) with reference to the fixed part, the variation in total capacitance is obtained. The total capacitance decreases (in the range from 20.2 to 1.5 pF) with decrease in effective overlapping area for the variation of angular position from 0 to 90° The maximum measured tuning ratio for the proposed design of the variable capacitor was 13.5:1.

Presented variable capacitor can be used for detection angular position in the range from 0 to 90°.

The new horizon has been opened combining the rapid prototyping equipment in electronics and mechanical engineering in an interdisciplinary way to manufacture, for the first time, variable capacitor using poly-jet and ink-jet technologies. These techniques do not require higher mask counts which makes the fabrication fast and cost-effective.

This work, for the first time, demonstrates the combination of ALARIS 30 3D printer and Dimatix DMP-3000 materials deposition printer in order to fabricate the interdigital capacitor with complex 3D geometry. ALARIS 3D printer has been used for manufacturing plastic platform (with the possibility to precisely adjust angular position of one comb related to another) and Dimatix printer has been used to print silver conductive inks on flexible substrates (Kapton film), and this mechanically flexible structure was used to cover capacitor's fingers on the platform (assembly).