RF Characteristics of Open Stubs on PES Substrate for Application to Capacitive Matching Components on Flexible MMIC

In this work, open stubs were fabricated on a polyether sulfone (PES) substrate, and their basic radio frequency (RF) characteristics were investigated for application to RF matching components of a flexible monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC). According to the results, an open stub employing coplanar waveguide (OSCPW) on PES exhibited much lower loss than that on silicon substrate. The OSCPW with a length of $500{\mu}m$ on PES showed capacitance values of 0.031 ~ 0.044 pF from 0.5 to 50 GHz. For application to a relatively high-value capacitive matching, an open stub employing a fishbone-type transmission line (OSFTTL) was fabricated on PES, and its characteristics were investigated. The OSFTTL showed much higher capacitance values than the OSCPW due to the high effective permittivity value. Specifically, the OSFTTL on PES showed capacitance values of 0.066 ~ 0.24 pF from 0.5 to 50 GHz, which are higher than those for the open stub on silicon substrate. The above results indicate that the OSCPW and OSFTTL on PES can be effectively used for application to low/high-value capacitive matching components on microwave and millimeter wave flexible MMIC. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work is the first report of the investigation of RF capacitive matching components on PES substrate.