Conductive silver fabric as a shorting calibration standard for dielectric coaxial probes

•Stretchable silver fabric provides a robust shorting standard for dielectric coaxial probes empirical calibration.•Silver fabric can be adapted to any dielectric probe geometry.•Larger dielectric coaxial open-ended probes are less sensitive to the type of shorting standard used for calibration.•Auxiliary foam can benefit the contact between open-ended coaxial probe and shorting standard.•A shorting standard in the calibration is critical to account for dielectric relaxation at radio frequencies. Dielectric measurements are of significant relevance in many areas of research and industry. The accuracy of dielectric sensors depends highly on their calibration. Traditional short-circuit standards for calibrating coaxial probes face challenges in practical application and interchangeability between probe geometries. We evaluated the use of a polyvalent electrically conductive silver fabric as a shorting standard for empirical calibration of open-ended and coaxial cell probes by comparing it with other materials. Results showed that the type of shorting material used was less critical with increasing probe size as observed in the case of open-ended coaxial probes and that silver fabric was more consistent than other materials across probe geometries. Silver fabric demonstrated high accuracy at frequencies below 100 MHz for the coaxial cell. We also demonstrated the need for including a shorting standard in the empirical calibration of coaxial probes to account for dielectric relaxation phenomena in the radio frequency bandwidth.