Low-temperature sintering of SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19 ferrite and its characterization for X-band antenna application

SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19 ferrite was sintered at900 °C with B2O3 and BBSZ glass as sintering additives. The impacts of additives on the densification, microstructure, dielectric and magnetic properties of the ferrite have been studied. The bulk densities of 4.0 and 4.3 g/ccwere observed in 5 wt% B2O3 and BBSZ glass added specimens respectively. The B2O3and BBSZ glass containing ferrites showed the saturation magnetization (Ms) of 59 and 57 emu/g respectively compared to 68 emu/g forthe ferrite without additives. The Ms of the ferrite decreases with the addition of sintering additive sowing to the presence ofthe nonmagnetic glassy phase in the sintered specimen. Both the permeability (μʹ = 4.9) and permittivity (εʹ = 4.3) were highest in the specimen containing BBSZ glass due to the enhanced densification. A microstrip-fed cylindrical ferrite antenna based on SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19ferrite was designed and proposed for the X-band (8–12 GHz) application. Simulation and experimental studies of the antenna characteristic parameters were carried out. The antenna based on B2O3 added ferrite showed a minimum return loss of −44.9 dB and gain of 3.03 dBi at a resonance frequency of 10.5 GHz. However, antenna based of BBSZ glass containing ferrite showed the highest gain of 5.3 dBi and bandwidth of 133 MHz respectively at 10.45 GHz. The good agreement was observed in both simulation and experimental results of the designed antenna. The results suggest that the low temperature sintered ferrite material can find potential applications in multilayer devices operating in X-band frequency. [Display omitted] •BBSZ glass is most effective sintering additive for SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19 ferrite.•SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19 ferrite sintered at 900 °C shows good magnetic properties.•An antenna designed using the sintered ferrite shows good antenna performances.