Patent Application
20220077579
This application claims the benefit of priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 202010934857.6 filed on Sep. 8, 2020, the contents of which are incorporated herein in their entirety by reference.
The present disclosure relates to the field of antenna technology, and particularly relates to an antenna, an antenna device, a fabricating method of the antenna, and a fabricating method of the antenna device.
In the related art, the antenna is generally a planar microstrip antenna, such as a patch antenna.
In an aspect, the present disclosure provides an antenna, including: a first substrate; a base material layer on the first substrate and having a plurality of antenna cavities arranged in an array therein; and a conductive layer on a sidewall of each of the plurality of antenna cavities, each of the plurality of antenna cavities and the conductive layer on the sidewall thereof forming an antenna unit, wherein each of the plurality of antenna cavities includes a first opening, and an aperture of the first opening at a position of the antenna cavity close to the first substrate is smaller than an aperture of the first opening at a position of the antenna cavity away from the first substrate.
In an embodiment, each of the plurality of antenna cavities includes a first cavity and a second cavity in physical contact with the first cavity, the second cavity being closer to the first substrate than the first cavity; the first cavity includes a second opening, and the second cavity includes a third opening; in a direction pointing from the second cavity to the first cavity, an aperture of the second opening gradually increases, and an aperture of the third opening is constant; and a difference between the aperture of the second opening at a position of the first cavity in physical contact with the second cavity and the aperture of the third opening is smaller than a first value.
In an embodiment, the first value is 1 μm.
In an embodiment, the aperture of the second opening at the position of the first cavity in physical contact with the second cavity is equal to the aperture of the third opening.
In an embodiment, the first cavity includes at least one first sidewall inclined relative to the first substrate; and the second cavity includes at least one second sidewall perpendicular to the first substrate.
In an embodiment, the first cavity has a hollow portion of a truncated pyramid shape and includes four first sidewalls inclined relative to the first substrate; and the second cavity has a hollow portion of a cuboid shape and includes four second sidewalk perpendicular to the first substrate.
In an embodiment, the first cavity has a hollow portion of a circular truncated cone shape and includes an arc-shaped first sidewall inclined relative to the first substrate; and the second cavity has a hollow portion of a cylinder shape and includes an arc-shaped second sidewall perpendicular to the first substrate.
In an embodiment, a material of the base material layer includes any one of silicon, quartz, and ceramic.
The present disclosure further provides an antenna device, including the antenna described above and a phase shifter connected to the antenna.
In an embodiment, the phase shifter includes second and third substrates opposite to each other, and a dielectric layer between the second and third substrates, and the second and third substrates are configured to generate an electric field therebetween to change a dielectric constant of the dielectric layer.
In an embodiment, the first substrate serves as the second substrate.
In an embodiment, a first electrode layer is on a side of the second substrate close to the third substrate, and a second electrode layer is on a side of the third substrate close to the second substrate;
In an embodiment, each of the plurality of sub-electrodes has a shape of at least one of a comb shape and a spiral shape when viewed in a plan view.
The present disclosure further provides a method for fabricating an antenna, including: preparing a first substrate; forming a base material layer on the first substrate; forming a plurality of antenna cavities arranged in an array in the base material layer; and forming a conductive layer on a sidewall of each of the plurality of antenna cavities, wherein each of the plurality of antenna cavities includes a first opening, and an aperture of the first opening at a position of the antenna cavity close to the first substrate is smaller than an aperture of the first opening at a position of the antenna cavity away from the first substrate.
In an embodiment, a material of the base material layer is silicon; and forming the plurality of antenna cavities arranged in an array in the base material layer includes: forming the plurality of antenna cavities arranged in an array by a bulk silicon etching process.
The present disclosure further provides a method for fabricating an antenna device, including: fabricating an antenna, wherein the antenna is the antenna according to embodiments of the present disclosure; fabricating a phase shifter; and assembling the antenna and the phase shifter into a single body by a bonding process or a laminating process.
In order to make those skilled in the art better understand the technical solutions of the present disclosure, the present disclosure is further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and the specific embodiments.
The shapes and sizes of the components in the drawings are drawn not to scale, but are merely intended to facilitate an understanding of the contents of the embodiments of the present disclosure.
Unless defined otherwise, technical or scientific terms used in the present disclosure shall have the ordinary meaning as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the present disclosure belongs. The terms “first”, “second”, and the like as used in the present disclosure are not intended to indicate any order, quantity, or importance, but rather to distinguish one element from another. Similarly, the term “a”, “an” “the” or the like do not denote a limitation of quantity, but rather denote the presence of at least one. The term “include”, “comprise”, or the like, means that the element or item preceding the term includes the element or item listed after the term and its equivalent, but does not exclude other elements or items. The term “connected”, “coupled” or the like is not restricted to physical or mechanical connections, but may include electrical connections, whether direct or indirect. The terms “upper”, “lower”, “left”, “right”, and the like are used only to indicate relative positional relationships, and when the absolute position of the object being described is changed, the relative positional relationships may also be changed accordingly.
The patch antenna includes a dielectric substrate, a metal layer on the dielectric substrate, and a reference electrode layer below the dielectric substrate. However, since the patch antenna has a narrow gain bandwidth, application of the patch antenna to an antenna device results in a low gain and a low power capacity of the antenna device.
In a first aspect, as shown in
In an embodiment, the base material layer 2 is on the first substrate 1, the base material layer 2 has a plurality of antenna cavities 31 arranged in an array, a sidewall of each antenna cavity 31 is provided with a conductive layer 32, and each antenna cavity 31 and the conductive layer 32 on the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31 form an antenna unit 3. In an embodiment, the conductive layer 32 has a uniform thickness. In an embodiment, the number of the antenna. units 3 included in the antenna is not limited, and the antenna may include any number of rows or columns of antenna units 3, and the following description is given by taking the case that the antenna includes antenna units 3 in a 3×3 array as an example. The antenna unit 3 is a radiating unit and is configured to transmit radio frequency (RF) signals. In an embodiment, each antenna cavity 31 includes a proximal opening D2 on a side of the antenna cavity 31 close to the first substrate 1, and a distal opening D1 on a side of the antenna cavity 31 away from the first substrate 1. In
It should be noted that, the base material layer 2 is a material layer defining the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31, the base material layer 2 is etched to form the plurality of antenna cavities 31 in the base material layer 2, and the depth of the base material layer 2 is equal to the depths of the antenna cavities 31. The depth of the conductive layer 32 on the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31 in the direction perpendicular to the first substrate 1 may be equal to the depth of the antenna cavity 31, or may be smaller than the depth of the antenna cavity 31, which is not limited herein.
In the antenna according to the embodiment, the shape of the antenna cavity 31 may be in various forms. For example, as shown in
In an embodiment, the shape of the antenna cavity 31 may include various types. For example, the antenna cavity 31 may be a horn-shaped cavity having a truncated pyramid shape, a circular truncated cone shape, or the like. For example, the description is given by taking the case that the antenna cavity 31 includes the first cavity 311 and the second cavity 312 as an example. As shown in
In some embodiments, as shown in
In some embodiments, as shown in
In an embodiment, the antenna cavity 31 may have other shapes, and the specific structure thereof may be designed as needed, as long as the aperture R1 of the distal opening D1 of the antenna cavity 31 is larger than the aperture R2 of the proximal opening D2 of the antenna cavity 31, and the aperture of the antenna cavity 31 at a position relatively away from the first substrate 1 is not smaller than the aperture of the antenna cavity 31 at a position relatively close to the first substrate 1 in the whole structure of the antenna cavity 31.
It should be noted that the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31 is provided with the conductive layer 32, the conductive layer 32 uniformly covers the sidewall along the shape of the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31, and the shape of the conductive layer 32 is defined by the antenna cavity 31, so the shape of the antenna cavity 31 is the same as the shape of the film structure of the conductive layer 32 as formed.
In an embodiment, the base material layer 2 may include various types of materials. For example, the material of the base material layer 2 may include silicon, quartz, ceramic, etc., and thus the antenna cavity 31 may be fabricated by a semiconductor processing, such as a micro-fabrication process or a process for fabricating a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), etc.
In an embodiment, the base material layer 2 may be a monolithic substrate, and the first cavity 311 and the second cavity 312 may be formed as a single structure and are formed in the base material layer 2 in the same etching process. The base material layer 2 may also include a plurality of sub-substrates, for example, a first sub-substrate and a second sub-substrate, which are stacked, In an embodiment, the first cavity 311 is formed in the first sub-substrate, the second cavity 312 is formed in the second sub-substrate, the etched first and second sub-substrates are stacked and bonded to form the base material layer 2, and the first cavity 311 and the second cavity 312 are aligned and assembled to form the antenna cavity 31. The specific configuration may be set according to actual needs, and is not limited herein.
In a second aspect, as shown in
In an embodiment, as shown in
The dielectric constant of the dielectric layer 6 may be changed by changing the electric field between the second substrate 4 and the third substrate 5, so that the phase of the RF signal (i.e., the beam) can be changed after the RF signal passes through the dielectric layer 6, and then the RF signal enters into the antenna 100 to be transmitted by the antenna 100. The adjustable dielectric in the dielectric layer 6 may include various types, for example the dielectric layer 6 includes a plurality of liquid crystal molecules.
In an embodiment, as shown in
In an embodiment, as shown in
In an embodiment, the structures of the first electrode layer 41 and the second electrode layer 51 may include various types. For example, as shown in
In an embodiment, as shown in
In an embodiment, the first substrate 1, the second substrate 4, and the third substrate 5 may include various types of substrates. For example, the first substrate 1 or the second substrate 4 may be a glass substrate, the third substrate 5 may be a glass substrate, or may also be various types of flexible substrates, for example, a polyimide substrate. In the case where the third substrate 5 of the phase shifter 200 is a flexible substrate, the conformal antenna device may be easily achieved, and is suitable for application scenarios where the requirement for conformal property is high, such as satellite communication, which is not limited herein.
Referring to
In a third aspect, as shown in
In step S1, as shown in (a) and (b) of
In an embodiment, the base material layer 2 may be a monolithic substrate, and the antenna cavity 31 is formed in the base material layer 2 by a single etching process. The base material layer 2 may also include a plurality of stacked sub-substrates, each corresponding to a portion of the antenna cavity 31, The sub-substrates are etched respectively to form the portions of the antenna cavity 31 corresponding to the respective sub-substrates, and then the sub-substrates are stacked by a bonding process to form the base material layer 2, where the portions of the antenna cavity 31 in the sub-substrates are aligned to form the antenna cavity 31. The specific configuration may be set according to actual needs, and is not limited herein.
In an embodiment, the material of the base material layer 2 includes silicon, ceramics, quartz, and the like, and the description will be given by taking the case that the base material layer 2 includes silicon as an example. Step S1 may include: etching the base material layer 2 by using a bulk silicon etching process to form a plurality of antenna cavities 31 arranged in an array. In an embodiment, a wet etching process may be adopted, or a dry etching process may also be adopted to perform three-dimensional bulk silicon etching on the monocrystalline silicon substrate (i.e., the base material layer 2). In an embodiment, an anisotropic etching process may be adopted, and an isotropic etching process may also be adopted. By taking the anisotropic etching process as an example, the required shape of the antenna cavity 31 can be etched by providing a mask made of a corrosion-resistant material to control the etching speed by utilizing the characteristic that the etchant has different etching rates for different crystal orientations of the monocrystalline silicon substrate. Because the base material layer 2 is the silicon substrate, the bulk silicon process in the MEMS process may be used to form the antenna cavity 31, which can promote the etching accuracy of the antenna cavity 21.
In step S2, as shown in (b) and (c) of
In an embodiment, the material of the conductive layer 32 is sputtered or plated on the sidewall of the antenna cavity 31 by a sputtering process or a film plating process using a metal growth, and the material of the conductive layer 32 may be various conductive materials, such as copper, silver, aluminum, and the like.
In a fourth aspect, as shown in
In step S01, the antenna 100 is fabricated.
Referring to
In step S02, the phase shifter 200 is fabricated.
The lower substrate (i.e., the third substrate 5) of the phase shifter 200 may be a single substrate, or may be formed by stacking a plurality of substrates by a bonding process. The third substrate 5 may be a glass substrate, a quartz substrate, a poly imide substrate, or the like. The material of the second electrode layer 51 is applied on a side of the third substrate 5 opposite to the second substrate 4 by a sputtering or film plating process, and the material of the second electrode layer 51 includes various types of conductive materials, such as copper, silver, aluminum, and the like. in the case where the second electrode layer 51 includes a plurality of sub-electrodes 511, the entire layer of the second electrode layer 51 may be etched into the plurality of sub-electrodes 511 by an etching process. Similarly, the material of the first electrode layer 41 is applied on the side of the second substrate 4 opposite to the third substrate 5 by a sputtering or film plating process, and the material of the first electrode layer 41 includes various types of conductive materials, such as copper, silver, aluminum, and the like. In the case where the first electrode layer 41 has a plurality of slits 001, the plurality of slits 001 may be formed, by etching the first electrode layer 41 by an etching process. Next, the second substrate 4 and the third substrate 5 are aligned and assembled together, and liquid crystal molecules are filled between the second substrate 4 and the third substrate 5 to form a dielectric layer 6 therebetween.
In step S03, the antenna 100 and the phase shifter 200 are assembled into a single body by a bonding process or a laminating process.
After the antenna 100 and the phase shifter 200 are fabricated, since the antenna 100 is a silicon-based semiconductor structure and the substrate of the phase shifter 200 is a glass structure, the antenna 100 and the phase shifter 200 can be stably connected through a bonding process or a laminating process, so as to form a complete antenna device. Compared with the related art where the antenna is a metal antenna such as a patch antenna, the antenna and the phase shifter can only be aligned and assembled by a mechanical assembly process, in the embodiment, the antenna 100 and the phase shifter 200 are aligned and assembled by a bonding process or a laminating process. The alignment precision of the bonding process or the laminating process is extremely high, the bonding quality is excellent, and the alignment tolerance can be effectively reduced.
In a fifth aspect, the embodiment further provides a display device, including the antenna device. It should be noted that the display device provided in the embodiment may be any product or component with a display function, such as a mobile phone, a tablet computer, a television, a display, a notebook computer, a digital photo frame, a navigator and the like. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that the display device also has other essential components, which are not described herein nor should they be construed as limiting the present disclosure.
It could be understood that the above embodiments are merely exemplary embodiments adopted for describing the principle of the present disclosure, but the present disclosure is not limited thereto. Various variations and improvements may be made by those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the spirit and essence of the present disclosure, and these variations and improvements shall also be regarded as falling into the protection scope of the present disclosure.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 202010934857.6 | Sep 2020 | CN | national |
