Microwave engineering cannot be performed without materials science, that's a fact you'd better get used to if you want to enter or stay in this field.
This page discusses the different types of materials commonly used in microwave applications. We have divided materials into some logical categories for you, but you should remember that there is a lot of overlap between categories such as structural materials and conductors, so if you don't find a particular material in a table, either check the other tables or go to the encyclopedia and look it up. To get the most information on a particular material in one of the tables, simply click on it to see all of the information we have compiled on it. All materials we discuss are (or should be) indexed in the Microwaves101 encyclopedia as well.
We have a couple of options if you want to look elsewhere for more info on materials.
- Some of the data contained in our tables was "borrowed" from the nist.gov web site, be our guest and visit them for more detailed info on materials!
- Matweb is also a good resource for material properties.
- Loyal reader Andre tells us that MatMatch is "a material database that is free forever and very user friendly." We checked it out - he's right!
And now, on to our own contributions:
Absorbing materials
Capacitor dielectric materials (not much up yet!)
Conductor and resistor materials
Conductor and resistor thick film pastes (not yet)
Glass sealing materials
Hazardous materials
Isotropy and anisotropy
Magnetic materials
Metamaterials
Miscellaneous materials(in case you need to know the dielectric constant of that prime rib you ate over the holidays...)
High permeability materials
Structural materials
Solders and epoxies (not yet)
Hard substrate materials(such as ceramics)
Soft substrate materials (such as Duroid)
Superconductor materials (be patient, OK?)
Thermal conductivity
In addition to our tables of bulk material properties, you scientific types can find atomic numbers and weights by looking through our modest Periodic table.