Microwave Sensor for Liquid Dielectric Characterization Based on Metamaterial Complementary Split Ring Resonator

Abstract

A metamaterial-based microwave sensor with complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) is implemented for dielectric characterization of liquids. The novelty in the proposed contactless sensor is the use of liquid samples placed normal to the sensor surface. Placed inside of glass capillary tubes, it is quickly possible to analyze the dielectric properties of liquids simply by replacing the capillary tubes with new samples. The liquid samples inside the glass capillary tubes modify the resonant frequency and $Q$ -factor of the CSRR sensor. Thereby, a relation between the sensor resonant frequency, $Q$ -factor, and complex permittivity of the liquid samples can be estimated. A measurement setup was used to test the proposed sensor that exhibited successfully detection of 10% steps in binary mixtures of ethanol and water. The proposed sensor is compact, low cost, contactless, reusable, easily fabricated, and easy to work.