Trinity Antennas: flexible active radio frequency systems with intrinsic heat spreading

Abstract

Conformal, high-density, and high-power integration for radio frequency systems is critical to future wireless communications. Alumina ceramic offers significant potential owing to its ultra-low dielectric loss tangent. However, wireless systems that exploit alumina’s thermal advantages remain unexplored. In this work, we developed a flexible alumina-based radio frequency system that integrates active components and antenna patches on a single substrate, achieving intrinsic heat spreading and high electromagnetic performance simultaneously, while maintaining its mechanical flexibility. An X -band array prototype demonstrated uniform temperature distribution with an average reduction of 11.5 °C in the power amplifier temperature at 1.1 W dissipation, and a larger mm-wave array further validated the scalability of our strategy and its robustness at higher frequencies. These results confirm flexible alumina as a promising substrate that is a suitable electromagnetic medium with heat-spreading capability. This work also demonstrates the use of material-circuit co-optimization in which electromagnetic performance and thermal behaviors are jointly engineered.