Permittivity and permeability measurement of microwave packaging materials

There has recently been a growing interest in using new packaging materials-dielectric and/or magnetic-in a wide variety of applications for controlling the microwave heating of food. The study of the thermal behavior of these products requires the accurate determination of the complex permittivity and permeability when the temperature varies, and when the materials are irradiated in specific conditions. One of the main challenges is to distinguish the dielectric losses from the magnetic ones. In this paper, a practical measurement method is proposed, which consists of irradiating a rod sample successively with a homogeneous electric-field distribution with a low magnetic field and with a homogeneous magnetic-field distribution with low electric field. An accurate and efficient electromagnetic analysis tool is used to generate a set of points, which allow the construction of several bilinear functions that relate the scattering parameters of the circuit to the complex values of ε and μ so that ε and μ can then be easily determined from experimental measurements in accordance to whatever the special irradiation conditions. Some results for test materials are presented and discussed.