Microwave materials and fabrication techniques 3rd edition [Book Review]

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A considerable number of our readers particularly those who do not have everyday contact with the topic might remember the Smith chart and the tedious mathematical processes with the del operand when hearing the word “microwaves.” Scattering parameters, noise figures, and mixer conversion losses are those typical concepts taught during undergraduate courses. But what about creating a real microwave device? Not even the smartest guy from the electromagnetics laboratory can assemble a physical structure; for instance, a stripline filter, out of double curls and surplus tensors! We need materials, manufacturing processes, and suitable tools. Besides this evident challenge, we must also take into account that our engineering community has gotten wider and a lot of talented people in our project teams have never seen the nice vector operations and not even heard about the loss tangent, This is due to the fact that many recently introduced systems, designed for applications and tasks far away from conventional communications, radio, or microwaves, do indeed have elements or subsystems which utilize microwave radiation in one form or the other and,’at the same time, rely on experience from totally different fields of technology. One recent book in the field of practical microwave circuit realization is Microwave Matenhls and Fabrication Techniques written by Professor Laverghetta from Purdue University. Actually this specific volume is not entirely a brand new one because we have at hand the previous edition of the work, but at least (according to the author) many revisions and some complete re-writing has taken place. So, the book published by Artech House in their Microwave series obviously deserves a closer look. In numerical terms, we have seven main chapters, seven additional appendices, a bibliography (arranged by chapter but placed at the end of the volume) and an alphabetical index. The total number of pages is 287 of which 177 have been enough for the main text. Some 740 indexing words are shown and the bibliography consists of roughly 60 references, but a considerable number seem to be commercial data sheets and application notes rather than ordinary scientific papers or books by other authors, The number of illustrations is 64. Most are line drawings used to clarify a particular process or set-up, and only a few photographs of actual devices have been included. After the introductory chapter, Chapter 2 deals with circuit board dielectrics and Chapter 3 discusses metallic base materials, again, mostly from the printed circuit board’s view. A short treatment of layout questions is given in Chapter 4 under the title Microwave Artwork. Chapter 5 is devoted to printed circuit board manufacturing technologies and the following section shows the main bonding schemes for active or passive components. The final chapter illustrates selected packaging alternatives. A brief look at the contents reveals that this book is focused on circuit board applications and related materials. Semiconductors have been left out, and the same has happened to a number of physical constructions not fitting into the planar teflon world. Although a number of other design elements, like coaxial connectors, are mentioned, their treatment is on the most general level. The main strong areas seem to be different circuit board materials, their metallizations and most typical etching and bonding technologies, which are treated comprehensively and have supporting practical examples. These parts of the book look suitable both for an undergraduate student starting his or her journey to the microwave PCB world and for an engineer coming from a totally different academic discipline. The main value obviously comes from the detailed and highly illustrative explanations of vital process steps. A lot of critical questions arose while studying Professor Laverghetta’s text. To start with, I could not fully accept the title of the book as a well-targeted way of briefly describing the main idea between the covers. If we just think about the words microwaves and manufacturing, there are quite certainly many technologies and applications even the most modern designs are not and more importantly cannot be made by simple PCB processes. Either the author should have added considerable material or, alternatively, been more specific with the title.