I have designed a filter with a hairpin pass band from 7.3 to 7.7 GHz,
do i have to coat a ENIG layer for this application,
Will there be any affetcs due to the conductivity issue of nickel or gold at the frequency mentioned above?
can i use just a copper trace and skip the ENIG coating...?
Kindly help me out ....!!!!
I have designed a filter with a hairpin pass band from 7.3 to 7.7 GHz,
do i have to coat a ENIG layer for this application,
Will there be any affetcs due to the conductivity issue of nickel or gold at the frequency mentioned above?
can i use just a copper trace and skip the ENIG coating...?
Kindly help me out ....!!!!
As a hairpin filter is a "low-Q" type, it can be gold or nickel plated without a significant effect. By a fine measurement you may detect some minor change but certainly within a fraction of a per cent.
Perhaps the plate material would not help too much, but was proved that the Q factor of the middle resonator sections (and spacing between them), has a greater role in determining the overall Q rather than outer resonator sections (and their spacing).
For middle resonators, to increase their Q is preferable to use thinner lines (high impedance) and greater spacing.
2 micron gold plate will work and be thin enough to not perturb the fields much. Unfortunately, it is not thick enough to keep the copper from oxidizing over a longer period of time.