Microwave broadband permittivity measurement with a multimode helical resonator for studying catalysts

The authors present a resonant permittivity measurement method which works over a large microwave frequency domain, with a very small volume sample of dielectric material. The cell is a helical resonator having many modes of resonance. The shifts of resonance frequency and Q -factors are better interpreted with a bilinear function which depends on the complex permittivity of the material than by applying the classical perturbation formula. Results concerning two different catalysts which are used in the coupling oxidation methane reaction are given as a function of the temperature and the frequency to illustrate the correlation of both data sets and the differences in catalytic mechanisms.