Case Study for the Development of a Hybrid Composite Structure of Thermosetting and Thermoplastics

In the past few decades, the management of solid plastic waste has been a big challenge. Commercial recycling of thermoplastics is going on at a good scale but the reusability of thermosetting plastic waste is still a challenge. Recycled thermoplastics have proven applications in 3D-printed antennas. However, 3D printing of a thermoplastic-thermosetting composite has not been explored much for antenna applications. This study is an extension of work reported on rheological, morphological, mechanical, and sensing properties of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and LDPE-5%bakelite (BAK) composite-based 3D-printed micro-strip patch antennas (MPA). In this case study, the design, simulation, fabrication, and measurement have been done at 3 GHz, which lies in a bandwidth used for radar and satellite applications. The substrates were printed using fused deposition modeling (FDM). The patch has been designed using the values of the di-electric constant (ε r ) 2.282 and 2.06 for LDPE and LDPE-5%BAK, respectively. It was observed that there was a marginal increase in size for LDPE-5%BAK-based MPA compared to LDPE-based MPA, but it provides fewer losses, low-voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), and better bandwidth.