Description :
Job title : Innovative materials for 3D printing applied to microwave telecommunications.
Main research field : Information Science and Engineering (ENG).
Job summary : Owing to its high flexibility and its capacity to easily realize complex geometries, 3D printing appears today as an exciting shaping technique in different fields. Applications in the medical industry and design are now well developed, and other industrial fields, including the automotive industry and electronics, have recently become interested in this technology. Numerous commercial printable materials are now available but their limited range of dynamic properties (i.e. low permittivity and moderate dielectric losses) do not correspond to the needs of microwave designers. Thus, the aim of this post-doctoral position will be to develop new innovative printable materials for microwave applications (lossy materials, magnetic composites, low-loss dielectrics) in order to enlarge the potential applications of 3D printing technologies in the field of microwave telecommunications.
Job description : The project will be carried out at the Lab-STICC laboratory / University of Brest, France. Researchers of the Functional Materials team are internationally recognized for their works on the characterization, modeling and integration of functional materials (especially magnetic materials) in the field of microwave telecommunications. More recently, they developed activities around new technologies, such as Molded Interconnect Devices (MID) or 3D printing techniques, for the realization of microwave devices. Among them, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) appears to be a low-cost and flexible technique to design microwave devices with complex geometries without needing a time-consuming process. Thus, several laboratories worked on the design of microwave devices (transmission lines, antennas, filters) with this technology. However, the limited range of dynamic properties of available materials (permittivity between 2.5 and 4, dielectric losses higher than 10-3 at microwave domain) currently limits the performances of the devices. Moreover, FDM-compatible polymers that are usually used with this shaping technique (i.e. ABS or PLA) are not consistent with the constraints of military or space applications (temperature stability, power handling, outgassing…) and their thermo-mechanical properties have also to be improved (CTE, working temperature…). Thus, the development of new materials dedicated to the microwave domain is now required to enlarge the field of potential applications.
Therefore this project will focus on the development of innovative printable composite materials with dedicated properties. As an example, printable magnetic composites could be used to the design of conformable antennas with improved efficiency compared to pure dielectric-based antennas.
A few laboratories start to be interested in the development of printable materials suitable with microwave applications and on their microwave properties. Professor Grant’s group at Oxford University thus elaborated printable BaTiO3/ABS composites in order to get high index microwave materials. They also developed printable magnetic composites that present a permeability of 2 at 100 MHz. In another domain, Wicker’s group, at University of Texas-El Paso, developed printable ferromagnetic composites.
In order to develop innovative FDM-compatible materials for microwave applications, the following approaches could be explored (not limited to) :
• Elaboration of composites (polymers : PLA, ABS, PVDF, PSU, PEI…, load : CNT, carbon fiber, ferrites nanoparticles or microparticles, metal nanoparticles…)
• Physical and structural characterization (SEM, XRD)
• Microwave characterizations
• Filaments elaboration and 3D printing process optimization
• Elaboration of innovative material-based microwave devices by FDM
Key words : Additive technology, 3D printing, polymer composites, microwave, extrusion, fused deposition modeling, dielectric and magnetic characterization
Skills requirements : microwave characterization of materials, electromagnetic modeling of materials and design of microwave components. Good knowledge of 3D printing technologies applications. The candidate has to be a material scientist able to develop new printable composites.

Reference :

Date de démarrage : 01 mars 2018

Durée : 1 an

Contacter :
LabSTICC UMR CNRS 6285 and IRDL FRE CNRS 3744
Julien VILLE
Faculté des Sciences Université de Bretagne Occidentale 6 Avenue Victor le Gorgeu CS 93 837 29 238 BREST CEDEX 3 FRANCE
email : julien.ville@univ-brest.fr
Téléphone : 33298016664

Page web : https://www.univ-brest.fr/menu/recherche-innovation/pages-chercheurs/VILLE-Julien/