Wireless Test fixtures to Measure the Dielectric Properties of Materials in RF

Introduction

RF characterisation of dielectric materials is increasingly an important scientific and commercial activity. Even if a very significant effort of the RF community has allowed the development of reliable characterisation solutions, it remains that these techniques rely on RF test fixtures that are heavy to implement, expensive, and have a limited field of use (type of materials, frequencies, resolution…).

Industry Needs

These limitations make current solutions not adapted to the ever-increasing needs of companies, most of which have neither advanced skills in the field nor the equipment to implement these characterisation methods.

Impact of IoT

Indeed, the explosion of the IoT and thus of wireless communication solutions has given rise to the need for companies in a wide range of sectors (not only specialised in electronics and even less in RF) to have a better understanding of the RF performance of the materials they use or wish to use for the fabrication of their devices.

Material Challenges

For cost or supply reasons, these companies are often forced to use materials that are not necessarily suitable for RF, or simply whose RF characteristics are not known.

• Typically, plastics that under the same name may in fact have very different dielectric characteristics, particularly in terms of losses, pose a significant problem.

Project Objective

The idea of the project is to demonstrate the technical and economic viability of a new solution for RF characterisation of dielectrics.

Innovative Approach

This approach breaks with the techniques currently used, as it will make it possible to characterise a larger number of materials (plates, solids, liquids, powders, etc.) at a lower cost compared with current solutions.

Future Vision

We hope that in a few years this solution will become the reference solution for a large number of companies that until now have not had access to these test fixtures.