Main Content

metal

Conductor material

Since R2021a

collapse all in page

    Syntax

    m = metal(material)
    m = metal(Name=Value)

    Description

    m = metal(material) returns the metal used as a conductor in the PCB components. You can specify a material from the MetalCatalog (Antenna Toolbox). The default value for material is perfect electric conductor (PEC).

    example

    m = metal(Name=Value) returns the metal based on the properties specified by one or more .name-value pairs.

    Examples

    collapse all

    Open Live Script

    Create a microstrip transmission line with copper conductor.

    mline = microstripLine;

    Create a copper metal conductor.

    m = metal('copper')
    m = 
  metal with properties:

            Name: 'Copper'
    Conductivity: 59600000
       Thickness: 3.5560e-05

For more materials see catalog

    Change the microstrip transmission line conductor to copper.

    mline.Conductor = m
    mline = 
  microstripLine with properties:

              Length: 0.0200
               Width: 0.0050
              Height: 0.0016
    GroundPlaneWidth: 0.0300
           Substrate: [1x1 dielectric]
           Conductor: [1x1 metal]
          SolverType: 'MoM'
          IsShielded: 0

    View the microstrip transmission line.

    show(mline)

    Figure contains an axes object. The axes object with title microstripLine element, xlabel x (mm), ylabel y (mm) contains 6 objects of type patch, surface. These objects represent Copper, feed, Teflon.

    Input Arguments

    collapse all

    Material from the dielectric catalog, specified as a metal from the MetalCatalog. The default material is perfect electric conductor (PEC), which has infinite conductivity and zero thickness.

    Example: 'Iron'

    Data Types: char

    Name-Value Arguments

    Specify optional pairs of arguments as Name1=Value1,...,NameN=ValueN, where Name is the argument name and Value is the corresponding value. Name-value arguments must appear after other arguments, but the order of the pairs does not matter.

    Example: Name='Iron'

    Name of the metal material you want to use as a conductor, specified as a character vector.

    Example: Name='Iron'

    Data Types: char

    Conductivity of the metal material, specified as a scalar in Siemens per meter(S/m). If you set 'Conductivity' to 'Inf', you must set 'Thickness' to '0'.

    Example: Conductivity=4.8e06

    Data Types: double

    Thickness of the metal material along the default z-axis, specified as a scalar in meters.

    Example: Thickness=0.26e-6

    Data Types: double

    Output Arguments

    collapse all

    Conductor metal, returned as a metal object.

    Version History

    Introduced in R2021a

    See Also