Re: transmission line z

On Sun, 8 Jun 2025 11:41:19 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/8/2025 11:39 AM, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 9/06/2025 12:58 am, john larkin wrote:

Suppose you have a slab of FR4 with copper on both sides, standard
ebay stuff. Now shear off a long thin slice. That's a balanced
transmission line.
>
air
__________________ copper
.........................................fr4
__________________ copper
>
air
>
>
>
What's that called?
>
Does anyone know of a calculator that handles this case?

 
Neither of my transmission line textbooks say anything about that. It's
clearly a kind of transmission line, but presumably not a useful one -
it's going to be dispersive, just like microstrip. If it was useful you
would presumably be able to buy reels of it.
 

>
Used that way it's called a "parallel plate line" and the essential
characteristics for ye olde Telegrapher's Equation are given in Pozar:
>
<https://imgur.com/a/gAbKJgk>

Except that between the plates is FR4, dielectric constant near 4.

I could test that case experimentally, TDR some strips of copperclad.

Another case that I'm interested is a 5-layer board where the parallel
conductors are on layers 2 and 4.

air
.........................................fr4
__________________ copper
.........................................fr4
__________________ copper
.........................................fr4
air

Or even

air
.........................................fr4
__________________ copper
.........................................fr4
__________________ copper
air


Yes, I guess I'll have to crank up ATLC, which is rather a nuisance to
drive.

The goal is to build some high-voltage transmission-line transformers
using pot cores with stacked layers of PCBs as the windings, sort of
like the Coilcraft planar transformers.

PCBs with odd numbers of layers are, well, odd.