The purpose of this project was to investigate the dielectric properties, specifically the dielectric loss, of ceramic microwave dielectrics.
Ceramic dielectric are key materials in mobile and satellite communications systems.
The project was successful achieving its objectives and provided important background for winning a Brite-Euram project which has lead to a great deal of collaboration. The first stage of the project was to develop measurement systems to allow the measurement of the dielectric properties of the ceramics at microwave frequencies over a range of temperature. Very little work had previously been done on the low temperature properties of ceramic dielectrics. The measurement system consists of a tuneable copper cavity, which is used as dielectric resonator, mounted on a closed cycle cooler. Alumina, a far simpler ceramic, was used to probe the causes of loss.