Epoxy and Fused Silica Composite for Radio Frequency and Microwave Applications

Abstract

Fused silica and epoxy composite are prepared and presented in this paper for the microwave applications. The mixing of the fused silica and epoxy is done using powder processing techniques. Fused silica particles are working as a filler material in the epoxy matrix. The dielectric loss of the fabricated fused silica and epoxy composite is found to be 0.002 at 9.5 GHz, which is lower than the dielectric loss (0.012) of the unfilled epoxy. The dielectric constant of the fabricated fused silica and epoxy composite (ε_r 2.5) approximately remains same as the unfilled epoxy. Thus, a new polymer–composite is formed for the low-loss microwave propagation with improved mechanical and thermal properties because of the presence of the ceramic filler in epoxy matrix. The practical value holds good in agreement with the theoretical approaches.