A novel experimental method for microwave dielectric characterization of flexible or rigid thin sheets

This work demonstrates a novel experimental method coupled with analytical extraction codes to determine dielectric properties of flexible or rigid thin sheets in a waveguide measurement setup. This method is based on measuring the transmission phase shift with and without the material under test which is placed in the middle of two polymeric sample holder blocks. These blocks are 3D printed according to the thickness of the thin sheet sample and the complex dielectric properties are calculated by removing the unwanted sample holder block effects. The method was verified by measuring four commercially available thin sheets in an X-band rectangular waveguide.