Prof Tinus Stander

3D printing has become an invaluable rapid prototype and low-volume production tool for a wide range of industries and applications. The same is true in microwave and mm-wave systems, where previously unmanufacturable geometries can now be created with ease. In particular, the recent availability of new printing materials with low-loss electrical properties have moved 3D printing for RF from a metal-air design space to a new metal-air-dielectric paradigm. Nonetheless, numerous serious challenges remain to the widescale adoption of these processes in production systems. This talk will review the different 3D printing techniques relevant to microwave engineering, and highlight some applications. It will then present some recent advances in the use of low-loss dielectrics in filter design, as well as some recent efforts in wideband electromagnetic bandgap design.  

Biography:

Tinus Stander (Senior Member, IEEE) received B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. From 2010 to 2012, he served as an RF and Microwave Engineer at Denel Dynamics, Centurion, South Africa (a division of Denel SOC, Ltd.). He joined the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering, Carl and Emily Fuchs Institute for Microelectronics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, in 2013. He currently serves as the Institute's principal investigator in microwave and millimeter-wave microelectronics, with personal research interests in radio astronomy receivers, built-in self-testing of RF devices, and the use of 3D printing in microwave systems. He is also registered as Professional Engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa and serves as a Scientific Advisor with Multifractal Semiconductors (Pty) Ltd., Pretoria.