Practically in antenna design patch, feed and ground are made with copper sheets with non zero thickness. what is the thickness of copper used for ground, patch and feed in antenna design if the substrate is FR4 or any other substrate?
Thanks in advance.
Srinivasarao Alluri.
Hello,
generally, PCB copper thickness unit is in oz. and 1 oz = .035 mm.
Hi, In both CST and HFSS simulators, you can model the conductors as PEC( sheet with 0mm thickness) or as copper conductors with 0.035mm thickness. later in fabrications, both of them give almost same results.
While designing the antenna on HFSS use sheet (pec) due to this the designing process will be faster. Once you finalise your design , replace your pec sheet with 0.5 Oz or 1 Oz copper to get your results more accurate.
FR4 available with both copper (0.5 and 1 Oz) thickness.
When you build it, the thickness needs to be thicker than the skin depth.
Most of the current flows in one skin depth and nearly all of it in 3 skin depths, so any thicker is unneeded copper, weight and cost, unless you need it for something else, like strength. The skin depth in copper at 5 GHz is about 1 micron (0,001 mm) so 3 microns is thick enough.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect.
Yes, Denis Jaisson. Oz is a weight unit.
But when it comes to antenna designing on a software tool. Copper (pec) can be assigned to a sheet or to an object of some thickness.
Cannot be assigned in terms of weight.
For 1 Oz Cu, 0.036 mm thickness pec has to be assigned on software for accurate results.
Kindly, let me know if my approach is incorrect.
0.036 mm of copper is one skin depth at 3 MHz so would be a bit thin for high power or low attenuation at 30 MHz and below, but good above that.
Hello
Copper thickness is also known as metalization thickness. Metalization thickness generally depends on the skin dept of that particular metal on particular Frequency. Metalization Thickness generally taken as 5 times of skin depth.