This paper provides a study of some relevant electro-thermal properties of commercial films made by pressed graphene nano-platelets (GNPs), in view of their use as heating elements in innovative de-icing systems for aerospace applications. The equivalent electrical resistivity and thermal emissivity were studied, by means of models and experimental characterization. Macroscopic strips with a length on the order of tens of centimeters were analyzed, either made by pure GNPs or by composite mixtures of GNPs and a small percentage of polymeric binders. Analytical models are derived and experimentally validated. The thermal response of these graphene films when acting as a heating element is studied and discussed.

This paper investigates the performance of Thin-Film Microstrip Lines (TFMSLs), characterized by low-resistivity substrates, and proposed as interconnects in high-speed links for applications such as the fifth generation of communication systems (5G). The main contribution of this work is the study of the impact of the geometry of such lines, and of the data-rate and load conditions of the overall signaling system. To this end, several test structures based on coupled TFMSLs with different geometric configurations are here designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized. These structures introduce mismatching, bends, and unwanted coupling with adjacent traces. An electromagnetic model and a circuital one are here adopted to analyze these TFMSLs, which are validated against each other and against the measurements. A frequency analysis allows to highlight the different behaviors of the considered structure in terms of mixed-mode S-parameters and Insertion Loss. A time-domain analysis is also carried out to assess the Signal Integrity performance of high-speed data link systems based on these TFMSLs. Another contribution of this work is given by the derivation of design maps based on eye-diagram’s metrics, which can be useful to find the optimized trade-offs for the operating conditions to be imposed on these links, such as data-rate values or load impedance.