Estimation of the RF Characteristics of Absorbing Materials in Broad RF Frequency Ranges

Absorbing materials are very often used in RF applications. Their electromagnetic characteristics (relative permittivity εr, loss tangent tan δ and conductivity σ) are needed in order to obtain a high-quality design of the absorbing pieces in the frequency range of interest. Unfortunately, suppliers often do not provide these quantities. A simple technique to determine them, based on the RF measurement of the disturbance created by the insertion of a piece of absorber in a waveguide, is presented in this note. Results for samples of two different materials, silicon carbide and aluminum nitride are presented. While the former has a negligible conductivity at the working frequencies, the conductivity of the latter has to be taken into account in order to obtain a meaningful estimation of εr and tan δ. The equations of Kramers & Kronig have been applied to the data as a cross check, confirming the results.