Measurement techniques for ferromagnetic materials using a stripline

Polymer composites offer the promise for dramatically changing the design environment available to the antenna and microwave interconnect communities. As compared to metamaterials that have garnered so much attention in recent years, polymer composites consist of a polymer system with dissimilar material inclusions designed to modify one or more properties of the composite. For the purposes of this paper, we are most interested in polymer composites with engineered electric and magnetic properties at radio frequencies (RF). It is necessary to test the properties of candidate RF polymers across a wide bandwidth. Typically, only small laboratory samples of each material are available for testing. This paper describes the rationale, and presents some example data, for testing using a stripline field applicator.