Waveguide detection of radiation from a random sheet of nanowires

Contactless high-frequency information about nanowires is obtained by placing patterned sheets of oriented wires on a dielectric insert that partially fills a rectangular waveguide. Exact expressions for the fields within the guide are derived by treating the nanowire sheet within the partially-filled guide as an impedance boundary condition at the air-dielectric interface. Because the partially filled guide mixes TM and TE modes of an empty rectangular guide in a specific way, the S-parameters of a segment of such a guide are sensitive to the presence of the coated air-dielectric interface, whose surface impedance can be de-embedded from the measurements. Effects of disorder in wire orientation and location on the surface can be included in the surface impedance description and the de-embedding procedure.