Tuneable Composites Containing Magnetic Microwires

Abstract

This chapter provides a comprehensive review on tuneable electromagnetic properties of magnetic wire composites. In these systems, the microwave permittivity and permeability (response to the electric and magnetic field in the wave, respectively) can be controlled by a weak magnetic field, mechanical stress, and temperature. The underlying physics involves the combination of collective frequency dispersive effects and giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) effect in amorphous microwires. In particular, the emphasis is placed on specific magnetic structures in amorphous magnetic wires, which makes it possible to achieve high sensitivity of the surface impedance to external stimuli; modelling the microwave spectra in magnetic wire composites with different microstructure, and experimental results on tuneable impedance and scattering spectra. In order to face future developments in microwave technology with applications in such vital areas as wireless communication, antenna engineering, non-destructive testing of civil structures, multifunctional structural materials, and biomedical engineering, the investigations into innovative designs of electromagnetic materials continue to be an important issue. The problems difficult to overcome are related with unbalanced electric and magnetic properties of conventional matters, the lack of needed relationships between the refractive index and wave impedance and between the quality factor and tunability ratio. Here, we are examining diluted composites with magnetic metallic wires that can have both effective permittivity 綱勅捗 and permeability 航勅捗 at microwave frequencies. A special feature of these composites is that both parameters can demonstrate a strong tunability with respect to varying magnetic structure in wires with such external stimuli as magnetic field, mechanical load and heat. Furthermore, incorporating arrays of magnetic wires in fibre-reinforced polymer composites has also a potential to engineer materials with required structural and electromagnetic functionalities. Large values of permittivity can be engineered utilising ferroelectric or conducting elements. The latter could be preferable since very large values of 綱勅捗 are obtained for small volume concentrations and various frequency and spacial dispersions of permittivity are realised. Another advantageous feature of metallic composites is that due to a low concentration of the metallic phase it could be combined with other subsystems to obtain, for example,