Detection and Imaging of Magnetic Field in the Microwave Regime With a Combination of Magnetic Losses Material and Thermofluorescent Molecules

Characterization of the electromagnetic field emitted by various sources (antenna, radar, etc.) is an important issue, either for civil or defense applications. The measurement of electromagnetic field may be performed either by local probes or by thermography imaging, in particular with an infrared camera. The latter method, called electromagnetic infrared (EMIR) has been developed several years ago. We have recently successfully implemented this technique in the domain of visible light thanks to the combination of a film sensitive to either electric field (slightly conductive film) or magnetic field (insulating film with ferromagnetic particles) and a polymer coating doped with fluorescent molecules with an emission depending on temperature, indeed a thermofluorescent sensor. We present our recent results obtained imaging the microwave magnetic field emitted in the near field of a zeroth-order resonator (ZOR) antenna. The sensing film is a stack of FLEX-TOKIN magnetic absorber, already tested by EMIR infrared thermography in our group. A 20 μm film composed of a mixture of rhodamine B (RhB) in an epoxy matrix is screen printed on the FLEX surface. RhB, in ethanol solution, has a thermofluorescence coefficient of ~2%/K at room temperature at its maximum of fluorescence of 595 nm. Excitation light is delivered by an array of blue 470 nm LEDs. The 4.29 GHz microwave excitation of the ZOR device is amplitude modulated at 0.1-0.5 Hz in order to cancel any thermal drift and convection of the thermofluorescence image. Low-frequency excitation modulation also allows noise cancellation via image pixel demodulation postprocessing. We present the deduced temperature mapping of the sensing film placed 2 mm above the ZOR patch antenna.