when making custom PCB and pcb trace, what is the thickness of the trace?

I follow this tutorial for making PCB trace and simulating it under different frequencies.

What I fail to find in the documentation and tutorial, is what is the thickness of the trace/GND plane I am making? (In the default microstrip line).

It seems like I can only change the

d.Thickness

I tried to run

trace.Thickness

It gives me:

Unrecognized method, property, or field 'Thickness' for class 'traceLine'.

Answer 1

[Manikanta Aditya]

Hi @VASILEIOS CHRISTIANIDIS

Looks like the thickness of the trace (conductor layer) is not directly specified in the RF PCB Toolbox when creating custom traces using traceLine or tracePoint.

The thickness that you can specify is the dielectric thickness using the d.Thickness property, where d is the dielectric object created using dielectric('FR4'). This represents the thickness of the insulating layer between the trace (top conductor) and the ground plane (bottom conductor).

The conductor thickness, while not directly adjustable, affects the electrical characteristics of the PCB trace, such as impedance, loss, and dispersion. These effects are accounted for in the simulation models used by the RF PCB Toolbox.

Hope it helps.

[VASILEIOS CHRISTIANIDIS]

Thanks. Even tho this doesnt answer my question, as I understand from what you said, there is no way to configure the thickness of the trace and that only the engineers in matlab know the thickness of the trace.

[Manikanta Aditya]

Makes sense.

[Vishwanath Iyer]

Hi Vasileios,

The toolbox has 2 catalogs, one comprising of specific PCB passives such as transmission line types, couplers, filters, etc. and another for shapes that are commonly found on PCB structures such as bends, tees, rings, radials etc. You can create a custom PCB passive by either starting with one of existing catalog elements or with the shapes we provide. Regarding your question about conductor thickness, this exists on the 'Conductor' property of the PCB passives catalog which accepts a 'metal' object. For example use this sample of code and notice the trace thickness for the microstrip line is available as displayed

m = metal('Copper'); 
mline = microstripLine(Conductor=m)
mline.Conductor

Here are some links to the documentation that would be useful:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/rfpcb/custom-geometry.html?s_tid=CRUX_lftnav

https://www.mathworks.com/help/rfpcb/ref/pcbcomponent.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/rfpcb/ref/metal.metal.html

Hope this helps