Regarding the study of the thickness and surface roughness of electroplated copper coatings for the use of miniature millimeter-band vacuum electron devices

Abstract

The advancement of millimeter-wave and terahertz vacuum electrical devices holds great promise for high-resolution radar, high-data-rate communication, electronic warfare, and scientific applications. Compared with solid-state devices, vacuum electronic sources have intrinsic advantages for compact high power sources at high frequencies from 100 GHz to 1 THz. As one of the most widely used vacuum electronic amplifier, the traveling-wave tubes (TWTs) have their strong points of wide operating bandwidth, high efficiency, and low operating voltage. With the application development of traveling-wave amplifiers, they are challenged by the requirement for miniaturization, low-voltage operation, and lightweight. One of the alternatives to the conventional design TWTs is 2D planar traveling-wave amplifier, in which the most representative one is microstrip meander-line (MML) slow wave structure (SWS). Such SWS on dielectric substrates is compatible with microfabrication technology and attract growing interest. The power maintained increases as the thickness of such a 2D planar SWS increases. One of the least expensive methods for increasing the thickness of 2D planar metallic structures is electrochemical deposition. In this work, the effect of the electrochemical deposition parameters on the surface roughness of the copper coating is investigated. Several suggestions are made for the electrochemical deposition of a copper coating with a thickness of several tens of microns and a surface roughness of no more than 200 nm. The effect of surface roughness on transmission losses in millimeter and submillimeter bands is also shown.

Speaker

Evgenii
Ryabov
Russia

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