Field dependent permittivity of composite materials containing ferromagnetic wires

A type of a composite material is proposed, the microwave permittivity of which changes under the effect of a dc magnetic field applied to the whole composite sample. The composite consists of short ferromagnetic wires embedded into a dielectric matrix. A strong field dependence of the permittivity is seen in the vicinity of the antenna resonance, where the dispersion behavior can experience a transformation from a resonant spectrum to a relaxation one under the effect of the field. This permittivity behavior is due to a high sensitivity of the ac surface impedance of a ferromagnetic wire to a magnetic field, known as the magnetoimpedance (MI) effect. If the resonance-like dispersion behavior is realized, the real part of the effective permittivity can be made negative past the resonance for wire inclusion concentrations well below the percolation threshold. Applying a magnetic field, the negative peak continuously decreases as the dispersion tends to become of a relaxation type. The effective permittivity is analyzed within a one-particle approximation, by considering a wire piece as an independent scatterer and solving the scattering problem with the impedance boundary condition. A magnetic field is assumed to be applied in parallel to the wire. A new integrodifferential equation for the current distribution in a wire is obtained, which is valid for the surface impedance matrix of a general form. This work demonstrates the possibility of using the MI effect to design field-controlled composites and band-gap structures. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.