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Procedia Engineering 168 (2016) 995 – 998

30th Eurosensors Conference, EUROSENSORS 2016

Dielectric Permittivity Measurement of Paper Substrates Using

Commercial Inkjet Printers
Christoph Beisteinera , Bernhard G. Zagara
a Institute for Measurement Technology, Johannes Kepler University, Altenbergerstraße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria

Abstract
Commercial inkjet-printers from manufacturers like Epson or Brother can be used for rapid prototype printing conductive traces
onto paper or flexible PET substrates by using nanoparticle based dispersions. The surface coating of the substrate influences
the attainable electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity as well as the loss tangent, which are important parameters for
developing inkjet-printed microwave circuits on paper substrates. For characterizing the permittivity conventional methods are
using microstrip ring or microstrip transmission line resonators that require the printing of two electrically conductive layers. In
the proposed paper, a novel method is introduced to determine the relative permittivity and loss tangent via a coplanar waveguide
resonator realized on a single layer.

©c 2016
2016TheTheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd.is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd. This
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 30th Eurosensors Conference.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 30th Eurosensors Conference
Keywords: inkjet-printed electronics, dielectric permittivity, coplanar waveguide resonators

1. Introduction

A growing demand for low-cost wireless devices can be observed in the last years. Until now, microwave ap-
plications in the UHF range (0.3 GHz to 3 GHz) were usually subtractively fabricated by masking and etching. As
an alternative, rapid prototyping electronics or manufacturing low-cost sensors or actuators utilizing additive tech-
niques like inkjet printing are getting more and more attention. Antennas for RFID tags at low-frequencies or for
the microwave range have already been inkjet-printed with a Dimatix Materials Printer [1]. By using a commercially
available piezo-based Epson inkjet printer with a silver nanoparticle dispersion, electrically conductive traces can be
printed on substrates like HP, Epson or Canon to fabricate strain gages [2]. For designing microwave applications, it is
important to exactly know the dielectric permittivity r and the dielectric loss, which is described by the loss tangent
tan δ. State of art microwave measurement methods for determining these parameters are using microstrip structures
(e.g. ring resonators [3]), which use two conductive layers with a transmission-line on the top side and a ground-plane
on the bottom side. For absorbing the water-based conductive ink, usually only the top layers of the substrates are

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +43-732-2468-5932 ; fax: +43-732-2468-5933.

E-mail address: christoph.beisteiner@jku.at

1877-7058 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 30th Eurosensors Conference
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.324
996 Christoph Beisteiner and Bernhard G. Zagar / Procedia Engineering 168 (2016) 995 – 998

lG b lR

w s Cs Cs
Port 1 Port 2

Port 1 Port 2
feed line resonator feed line
Port 1 Port 2
h substrate (, tan(δ)) Left gap Transmission line Right gap
CPW feed line CPW feed line

(a) Principle structure of the CPW resonator. (b) Lumped port model of the CPW resonator.
Fig. 1. CPW resonator

coated with a polymer, so that microstrip resonators cannot be easily used. To overcome this problem a coplanar
waveguide resonator is presented in this article.

2. Coplanar waveguide stripline (CPW) resonator

The designed CPW resonator is shown in Fig. 1a. It consists entirely of a transmission line that is capacitively
coupled to a left and a right feed line for matching the impedance to the ports. A standing wave pattern is formed
within the structure so that periodic frequencies in the scattering parameters are produced depending on the electrical
length of the transmission line. In comparison to a microstrip resonator, the tuning of the resonance peaks of a CPW
design is more critical, so that a model in ABCD parameters is formulated based on geometric parameters of the air
gaps and lengths of the transmission lines.
The ABCD form of the resonant transmission line Ares , the left feed line Afeed,left and the right feed line Afeed,right
can be directly formulated by
   
cosh (γlR ) Zt sinh (γlR ) cosh (γlG ) Zt sinh (γlG )
Ares = 1 and Afeed,left = Afeed,right = 1 (1)
Zt sinh
(γlR ) cosh (γlR ) Zt sinh
(γlG ) cosh (γlG )
√

with the propagation constant γ = α + j · 2π f c0r,eff , the excitation frequency f , the effective permittivity r,eff , the speed
of light c0 and the impedances of the transmission lines Zt . Geometric parameters are the transmission line length
lR and the gap length lG . The attenuation constant α ≈ αc + αd describes conductor losses αc , dielectric losses αd ,
radiation losses are neglected. For common UHF microwave applications, dielectric losses are usually negligible, but
they have to be considered for inkjet-printed structures. Furthermore, conductor losses are also higher, due the lower
conductivity of inkjet printed traces compared to its bulk material. Approximate solutions for αc and αd exist:
 r,eff −1 π
αd = √r
r,eff · r −1 λ0 tan δd ,
  w
  
(2)
4πw(1− w )
with R = πσf μ ,
8.68·R 2(w+2s) 4πw(1− w+2s )
αc =   · π + ln w + 2 π + ln t(1+ ww+2s)
16Z0 (w+2s)K 2 (k) 1−( w+2s
w
)2 w t(1+ w+2s ) w+2s

the layer thickness t, the permeability μ = μ0 · μr , the trace width w and the slot width s [4].
The effective permittivity and the impedance for a CPW transmission line can be calculated with
w

K  (k1 )
r,eff = 1 + r2−1 · KK(k 2) K(k1 ) sinh(π· 4h ) 
 (k ) · K  (k ) and Zt = √ · = , = w+2s , k1,2 = 1 − k1,2
30π w 2
2 1 r,eff K k
( 1 ) with k 1 w+2s k2 sinh(π )
(3)
4h

and the complete elliptic integral K(k) and K  (k). The layer thickness of the CPW strips is usually thin (< 1 μm), so it
was neglected. The air gap can be modeled as a series capacitance C s and in ABCD form with
 1 
1 jωC
Agap,left = Agap,right = s . (4)
0 1
An approximate solution for the capacitance C s which is valid for b, w  cf0 can be found in [5]:
 √
2 · ·w  1+ 1+p2
C s = 0 r,eπ f f · p − 1 + p2 + log p , p = 4w
b
. (5)
The complete model can be described with
 
A A
Ages = Afeed,left · Agap,left · Ares · Agap,right · Afeed,right = 11 12 (6)
A21 A22
 Christoph Beisteiner and Bernhard G. Zagar / Procedia Engineering 168 (2016) 995 – 998 997

0
0

−1
−20

−2 −40
S 11 in dB

S 12 in dB
−3 −60

−4 ABCD model −80 ABCD model

ADS FEM simulation ADS FEM simulation
Measured Measured
−5 −100
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
f in GHz f in GHz

(a) reflection coefficient S 11 . (b) Transmission coefficient S 12 .

Fig. 2. Comparison between measured, finite-element simulated and calculated scattering coefficients of the coplanar waveguide resonator.

and transformed into S-Parameters

A12
A11 + −A21 Z0 −A22 2·(A11 A22 −A12 A21 )
S 11 = and S 12 =
Z0
A A (7)
A11 + Z12 +A21 Z0 +A22 A11 + Z12 +A21 Z0 +A22
0 0

by using the transformation rules from [6]. The impedance Z0 = 50 Ω is the port impedance of the network analyzer.
To verify the model, a finite element simulation with w = 4.5 mm, s = 0.2 mm, lR = 200 mm and lG = 5 mm was
created in Keysight Advanced Design System and simulated with the Momentum EM-Simulator. Rogers RT/duroid
5880 (h = 1.57 mm, r = 2.2, tan δ = 0.001) was used as substrate. The scattering parameters were also measured
with Rhode & Schwarz ZND vector network analyzer. The results are shown in Fig. (2) and prove the validity of the
model.

3. Fabrication process and results

The electrically conductive resonators were printed by using a six-colour Epson Stylus 1500W low-cost printer
and a silver-nanoparticle (SNP) ink from Mitsubishi. The black genuine ink has a viscosity of 2 mPa s and was
replaced by an empty refill-cartridge filled with SNP ink. The SNP ink’s viscosity of 1.8 mPa s is in the range of the
genuine ink. The final electrical conductivity depends on the ink density and on the proper surface coating of the
substrate. By using the software CADlink FilmMaker, a droplet volume of 3 pl and an ink density of 30% was used.
An electrical conductivity of σNAg = 6.77 × 106 S m−1 was attained immediately after printing. This conductivity is
approximately 10% of the conductivity of bulk silver (σAg = 61 × 106 S m−1 ). The conductivity was further increased
to σNAg,sintered = 10.3 × 106 S m−1 by thermal sintering the printed structures for 20 min at 80 ◦C. This coalescence
process changes the sizes and shapes of the silver nanoparticles and takes place at temperatures far below the melting
point of the bulk material. Responsible is a diffusion process of metal atoms along the particle surface or along inner
grain boundaries. The layer thickness of inkjet printed traces is t = 781 nm and was measured using a scanning
electron microscope. The electrical conductivity is now sufficient for printing antenna structures or transmission lines
on inkjet printable paper substrates.
The ADS design from the previous section was directly printed on the substrates HP Premium Plus Photo Paper
(HP PPP), Mitsubishi NB-RC-3GR120 (M NB-RC) and the PET-based substrate Mitsubishi NB-TP-3GU100 (M
NB-TP), which are shown in Fig. (3a).
The scattering parameters S 11 and S 12 of the inkjet-printed and the RT/duroid 5880 resonators were measured with
a vector network analyzer. The resonance peaks in the scattering parameters are depending on the used substrate (see
Fig. 3b). Much higher losses can be seen in S 12 of the inkjet printed structures as compared to the RF material.
These losses are basically caused by the low conductivity in combination with the small layer thickness and the higher
dielectric losses of the printable substrate. The permittivity and the loss tangent were estimated by minimizing the
998 Christoph Beisteiner and Bernhard G. Zagar / Procedia Engineering 168 (2016) 995 – 998

0
Mitsubishi NB-RC-3GR120

−20

Mitsubishi NB-TP-3GU100
−40

S 12 in dB
−60
HP Premium Plus Photo Paper
M NB-RC
−80 M NB-TP
HP PPP
RT/duroid 5880
−100
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
f in GHz

(a) Inkjet-printed CPW resonators on different substrates. (b) Transmission coefficient S 12 .

Fig. 3. Fabricated microwave resonators and measured scattering parameter.

mean-square error between the measured and the modelled scattering parameters S 11 and S 12 . The results for  and
tan δ of the different substrates are summarized in Tab. (1).
Table 1. Estimated permittivity and loss tangent of three different substrates.
Substrate Dielectric constant r Loss tangent tan δ
HP Premium Plus Photo Paper 5.2 0.11
Mitsubishi NB-TP-3GU100 (PET) 6.7 0.11
Mitsubishi NB-RC-3GR120 (Resin coated) 3.6 0.14

4. Conclusion

A procedure for measuring the permittivity and the loss tangent of inkjet-printable substrates for microwave ap-
plications was presented. A method for printing conductive traces with a commercially available inkjet-printer was
described. With this method coplanar waveguide resonators were printed on different photo papers and their trans-
mission and reflection S-parameter were measured. The results were used in combination with a simple model to
finally characterize the complex permittivity. Furthermore, it was shown that losses of the printed silver conductors
are higher in comparison to RF materials due to their low conductivity and low conductor thickness. Nevertheless,
the potential for low-cost UHF applications is huge, because inkjet-printing technology allows for rapid fabrication of
passive UHF components.
Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the work presented in this paper by the Austrian
Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under contract grant 843499 and WimTec Sanitärprodukte GmbH.

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