Broadband Permittivity and Permeability Extraction of 3-D-Printed Magneto-Dielectric Substrates

A broadband microwave magneto-dielectric spectroscopy technique is introduced and dedicated to the characterization of 3-D-printed magneto-dielectric substrates. Complex permittivity and permeability are extracted for the material-under-test fabricated in the same manner and with the same orientation of the electro-magnetic (EM) field as in the intended applications that include, for example, miniaturized and efficient antennas. The information is derived from the measured characteristic impedance and propagation constant of a test microstrip transmission line. To exclude the influence of the coaxial-to-microstrip transitions, printed launchers are proposed with puzzle-like interlock to test substrate which is used together with a printed thru-reflect-line (TRL) de-embedding set. The presented technique was experimentally validated on an example of specialized magnetic polylactic acid (PLA) filament printed substrate in the frequency range 0.1–6 GHz and a reference PLA substrate measured with two different techniques to yield comparable results.