An official website of the United States government
Geopolymers are structural materials that can be used as a viable alternative to ordinary portland cement concrete. However, their widespread adoption has been limited by the lack of understanding in their fundamental reaction mechanisms. Microwave characterization methods have shown promise at understanding these reaction mechanisms. However, the complex dielectric properties of geopolymer precursor powders and the effect of void content must first be understood. Therefore, in this work, the dielectric properties of two geopolymer precursor powders (blast furnace slag and fly ash) are measured. Then, the effect of void content and particle size distribution (PSD) is considered on the measured dielectric properties. By characterizing the inherent void content of these powder materials, this effect can be removed and therefore the true dielectric properties of the materials can be determined. The results show that the void content has a significant effect on the measured dielectric properties.
more »
« less
Sample Considerations for Short-Circuited Filled Transmission Line Measurements
Microwave materials characterization can be performed using a number of well-established measurement approaches. One such approach, the short-circuited rectangular waveguide (SC-RWG) filled transmission line approach, is known to have sample placement restrictions related to measurement reliability. This work focuses on this approach as a viable solution for microwave materials characterization of liquid materials and addresses the measurement restrictions within the context of sample length and dielectric properties. It is shown via simulation and measurement that samples of length greater than λg/6 (where λg is the wavelength in the RWG) do not have the reported measurement restrictions, nor do materials with high dielectric permittivity and/or loss factor (of any length).
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1234151
- PAR ID:
- 10472491
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 978-1-6654-5383-7
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
This article provides a broadband dielectric characterization of different silicate substrates up to 115 GHz, to fill the gap in the properties of different kinds of glasses in a broad part of the mm-wave spectrum. Both the internal structure (crystalline or amorphous) and the chemistry of the substrates influence the permittivity and loss tangent of the material. Quartz and sapphire are crystalline materials that exhibit a low loss in the mm-wave frequency range. Amorphous silicates generally have higher loss values than crystalline materials, and within the glasses, the level of impurities added also affects the dielectric loss. Several characterization techniques have been employed to cover a broad frequency band. The limitations of the different characterization techniques are also included. Once the dielectric properties of substrates are characterized, a metasurface has been designed and fabricated at 100 GHz to increase the reflection in window glass and provide coverage on areas that would otherwise be shadowed. The measurement results are in good agreement with the simulations.more » « less
-
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) force-distance (FD) experiments have emerged as an attractive alternative to traditional micro-rheology measurement techniques owing to their versatility of use in materials of a wide range of mechanical properties. Here, we show that the range of time dependent behaviour which can reliably be resolved from the typical method of FD inversion (fitting constitutive FD relations to FD data) is inherently restricted by the experimental parameters: sampling frequency, experiment length, and strain rate. Specifically, we demonstrate that violating these restrictions can result in errors in the values of the parameters of the complex modulus. In the case of complex materials, such as cells, whose behaviour is not specifically understood a priori , the physical sensibility of these parameters cannot be assessed and may lead to falsely attributing a physical phenomenon to an artifact of the violation of these restrictions. We use arguments from information theory to understand the nature of these inconsistencies as well as devise limits on the range of mechanical parameters which can be reliably obtained from FD experiments. The results further demonstrate that the nature of these restrictions depends on the domain (time or frequency) used in the inversion process, with the time domain being far more restrictive than the frequency domain. Finally, we demonstrate how to use these restrictions to better design FD experiments to target specific timescales of a material's behaviour through our analysis of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer sample.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)The contactless characterization technique time resolved microwave conductivity (TRMC) provides a means to rapidly and unambiguously approximate carrier mobilities and lifetimes for a variety of semiconducting materials. When using a cavity-based approach however, the technique can conventionally only resolve carrier mobilities in the plane of the substrate. In solar cells, charge carriers are extracted in the direction perpendicular to the substrate, therefore it would be beneficial if one were able to evaluate the mobility in this direction also. Here we present a novel approach for resolving charge carrier mobilities in different planes within a sample. Using a range of 3D-printed sample holders, where the sample is held at various angles relative to the incident light, we are able to simultaneously resolve the mobility in the plane of the sample and out of the plane of the sample. As examples, we have studied the 3-dimensional corner-connected metal halide perovskite methylammonium lead iodide and the 2-dimensional perovskite precusor, lead iodide.more » « less
-
The dielectric properties of materials play a crucial role in the propagation and absorption of microwave beams employed in Magic Angle Spinning − Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (MAS-DNP) NMR experiments. Despite ongoing optimization efforts in sample preparation, routine MAS-DNP NMR applications often fall short of theoretical sensitivity limits. Offering a different perspective, we report the refractive indices and extinction coefficients of diverse materials used in MAS-DNP NMR experiments, spanning a frequency range from 70 to 960 GHz. Knowledge of their dielectric properties enables the accurate simulation of electron nutation frequencies, thereby guiding the design of more efficient hardware and sample preparation of biological or material samples. This is illustrated experimentally for four different rotor materials (sapphire, yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), aluminum nitride (AlN), and SiAlON ceramics) used for DNP at 395 GHz/1H 600 MHz. Finally, electromagnetic simulations and state-of-the-art MAS-DNP numerical simulations provide a rational explanation for the observed magnetic field dependence of the enhancement when using nitroxide biradicals, offering insights that will improve MAS-DNP NMR at high magnetic fields.more » « less
