Currents are weird — they do whatever they want!

Currents are weird — they do whatever they want! Try predicting how currents would flow on a surface covered with tiny, mushroom-shaped structures at 100 GHz. Only Maxwell’s equations know where they go, but now we do too, thanks to some numerical wizardry. In this video, you’ll see the plane quasi-TEM wave current density on a solid copper surface that’s been transformed into a forest of 1 µm tall and 1 µm by 1 µm wide copper “mushrooms“ with 0.5 µm by 0.5 µm stems. I used the Simbeor 3DTF solver, which employs Trefftz finite elements—perfect for peeking inside conductive materials. Find out more in this video: #simbeor #electromagnetics #signal_integrity #conductor_roughness