Sridhar Sivapurapu won the third place in the student poster competition at FLEX 2021, a conference dedicated to flexible hybrid printed electronics, equipment processes, materials, and the applications that they enable. The conference was held February 22-25 in a virtual format.

Sivapurapu is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and works in the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center. 

The title of Sivapurapu’s award-winning poster is “Flexible and Ultra-Thin 30µm Glass Substrates for RF and mmWave Flex Applications.” This poster focuses on the capabilities of a glass-based substrate for flexible RF and mmWave (5G and beyond) applications. The poster first determines the electrical capabilities of this approach and then looks into the mechanical flexibility of the glass. The poster concludes with a comparison to other materials used for RF and mmWave applications and the future for this technology.

Sivapurapu is advised by ECE Professor Madhavan Swaminathan, who holds the John Pippin Chair in Microsystems Packaging and Electromagnetics and who serves as the director of the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC). Sivapurapu’s co-authors on the poster are Swaminathan, Mutee ur Rehman, and Fuhan Liu, all of ECE, the PRC, and the School of Materials Science and Engineering; Rui Chen and Suresh K. Sitaraman, of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Kimiyuki Kanno, of JSR Corporation in Saitama, Japan; Takenori Kakutani, of Taiyo Ink Manufacturing Company, Ltd.; and Martin Letz, of Schott AG.