Applicability study of classical and contemporary models for effective complex permittivity of metal powders.

Microwave thermal processing of metal powders has recently been a topic of a substantial interest; however, experimental data on the physical properties of mixtures involving metal particles are often unavailable. In this paper, we perform a systematic analysis of classical and contemporary models of complex permittivity of mixtures and discuss the use of these models for determining effective permittivity of dielectric matrices with metal inclusions. Results from various mixture and core-shell mixture models are compared to experimental data for a titanium/stearic acid mixture and a boron nitride/graphite mixture (both obtained through the original measurements), and for a tungsten/Teflon mixture (from literature).