Microwave and terahertz properties of porous Ba4(Sm,Nd,Bi)28/3Ti18O54 ceramics obtained by sacrificial template method

Microwave and terahertz communications are increasingly significant, however, the lack of material information in terahertz band limits their development. Moreover, few lightweight materials with a high relative dielectric constant () are found suited for satellite communication and wearable devices. In this study, we developed lightweight porous Ba₄(Sm_0.1Nd_0.9)_0.9Bi_0.1]_28/3Ti₁₈O₅₄ (BSNBT) ceramics exhibiting a total porosity ranging from 6.3% to 26.5% (bulk density ranging from 5.47 to 4.29 g/cm³) and relatively high ranging from 85.6 to 56.8, which were obtained by sacrificial template method using polymethyl methacrylate spheres (PMMAs) of varying average particle sizes, from 9 to 34 μm, as sacrificial materials. A high refractive index ranging between 7.5 and 8.9 and a low absorption coefficient of approximately 17 cm^?1 at 0.3 THz were obtained for the porous ceramics with different total porosities derived from PMMAs with average particle sizes of 9 and 19 μm. Furthermore, effective medium and Mie scattering theories were applied to understand the effects of porous structure on the dielectric properties in microwave and terahertz frequency ranges, respectively, owing to the different wavelengths in the BSNBT matrix. The results of this study suggest that introducing a porous structure can effectively exploit lightweight microwave dielectric ceramic materials and provide valuable information on their terahertz response mechanism.