Effective Complex Permittivity Measurement of 3D Printed Artificial Dielectric Substrate Based on a Cross Unit Cell

This paper presents an effective complex permittivity measurement of 3D printed artificial dielectric substrate. Two resonator methods are employed at the frequencies of 7.16 GHz and 7.06 GHz operating with TE011 and TM010 modes, respectively, for longitudinal and transversal permittivity component extraction. The measured results for the low permittivity polylactic acid (PLA) material validate the analytical models based on the parallel-plate capacitor networks (PPC) and numerical simulations in CST Studio Suite. The artificial dielectric substrates exhibit the maximum measured anisotropy of 9.15 % for the effective relative permittivity and 58 % for effective tangent loss. This can be useful for novel microwave designs using controlled spatially variant permittivity distribution.