Microfabrication of monolithic wafer-level miniaturized millimeter-wave air-filled half-mode waveguide filter based on the inward curving split ring resonator array

In this paper, we propose a miniaturized monolithic bandpass filter utilizing an air-filled half-mode waveguide and an inward curving split ring resonator array in the millimeter-wave band. The waveguide blocks the wave below cutoff frequency and the uniplanar array forms a rejection band above the transmission band. The microfabrication process of the filter adopts photoimageable technology and the combination of films with different thicknesses to build a 3D structure. The measured prototype has a center frequency at 65.5 GHz with a 3 dB fractional bandwidth of 30.7%. The minimum insertion loss is 2.1 dB. The proposed component offers excellent performance including a wide transmission band, a low pass-band insertion loss, an excellent isolation in the stop-band, and a steep roll-off at the upper cutoff frequency. Besides, due to the scalability of the waveguide and periodic array, this filter can be adapted for other frequency ranges. (paper)