Microwave characterization of electrical conductivity of composite conductors by half-wavelength coplanar resonator

Abstract

The aim of this work is to characterize the electrical conductivity of composite conductors deposited on an alumina substrate. Several half-wavelength coplanar resonators are realized using several pure conductors, silver (Ag), copper (Cu), gold (Au) and tin (Sn), to compare their quality factors (Q0), related to losses, with those from analytical methods. In the literature, losses in coplanar components have been estimated by different analytical methods. We have put in evidence the relationship between electrical conductivity of the conductor and the resonator quality factor. An overall good agreement among quality factor values obtained by the analytical formulas, by numerical simulations and by microwave measurements is observed. The surface roughness is taken into account to better estimate real conductor losses. Therefore, these analytical formulas are used to extract the electrical conductivity values of the composite conductors (Ag-aC, AgSnIn and AgSn), from measured quality factors.