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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 2, August 2006, pp.
513517
Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers

Yun-Sik Jin, Geun-Ju Kim and Seok-Gy Jeon
Terahertz Wave Research Laboratoy, Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Changwon 641-120
(Received 7 March 2006)
The terahertz dielectric properties of polymers were characterized by transmission terahertz timedomain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) in the frequency range extending from 0.2 to 3.0 THz. The terahertz absorption spectra, the refractive indices and the dielectric functions of various polymer
materials were measured and compared. The variation of the refractive index of the polymers was
less than 6 %, ranging from 1.4 to 1.8, within the investigated frequency range, but the absorption
properties of the polymers showed very different frequency-dependent behaviors. The loss mechanism for terahertz radiation in polymers is discussed by correlating the absorption coefficients and
the loss tangents (tan ) of the materials.
PACS numbers: 42.65.Re, 07.57.-c, 72.22.-d, 78.30.Jw
Keywords: Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), Polymers, Refractive index, Absorption coefficient, Dielectric constants
each material. From the measured dielectric properties,

the loss mechanism of THz radiation for each polymer is
also discussed.
I. INTRODUCTION
Over the past ten years, there has been a remarkable effort in employing terahertz (THz) spectroscopy
for investigating material properties [14]. Pulsed THz
time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) is a coherent technique, in which both the amplitude and the phase of a
THz pulse are measured. Coherent detection enables direct calculations of both the imaginary and the real parts
of the refractive index without using the Kramers-Kronig
relations. From the resulting refractive index, one can
obtain the absorption coefficient and the dielectric constant of the material. THz-TDS has been employed to
investigate a wide variety of materials, including liquids
[5], semiconductors [6,7], superconductors [8], explosive
materials [9], and gases [10].
Various polymers have been widely used for packages,
bottles, semiconductor devices, electrical insulation, and
other applications. The electrical properties below a few
gigahertz and the optical properties of polymer materials are well known, but there are few reported data
on the properties in the far infrared or terahertz ranges.
The refractive index and the absorption coefficient for
polyethylene and teflon at the millimeter wavelengths
are discussed in Ref. 11. Recently, Nagai et al. reported
the dielectric properties of polyamide (PA-6) in the THz
frequency region [12]. In this article, the THz optical
properties and the complex dielectric function of several
polymer materials are experimentally characterized by
using transmission THz-TDS. The refractive index, the
power absorption, and the complex dielectric functions
in the THz region are compared with known values for
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II. EXPERIMENTS
1. THz Time-Domain Spectroscopy System.
A standard transmission THz TDS system is employed

and is illustrated schematically in Fig. 1 [13]. The laser
source is a commercial mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser
(Spectra Physics Mai Tai) producing 70 120 fs pulses
at 780 920 nm with a repetition rate of 80 MHz and
an average power of 600 1200 mW. The fs laser beam
was divided into two beams, one for exciting the emitter
antenna, and the other for measuring the THz signal at
Fig. 1. Experimental setup for transmission THz timedomain spectroscopy.
ysjin@keri.re.kr; Fax: +82-55-280-1490
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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 2, August 2006
Table 1. List of polymer samples and their physical and electrical constants [16].
Abbreviations
Full Name
Refractive
Index
PP
PTFE (Teflon)
HDPE
ABS
Polypropylene
Poly tetrafluoroethylene
Polyethylene-high density
Polyacrylonitrile butadiens - styrene
Polyethylene
terephthalate
Polymetaphenylene
isophthallamide
Polymethlmethacrylate
1.49
1.38
1.54
NA
Dielectric
Constant
@1 MHz
2.2 2.6
2.0 2.1
2.3 2.4
3.2 3.4
1.58 1.64
3.0
NA
4.4@60 Hz
1.49
2.6
1.584 6
1.53
2.9
3.6
PET (Polyester,
Mylar)
Polyaramid
PMMA,
Acrylic
PC
PA 6
Poly carbonate
Polyamide nylon 6
the detector crystal. The THz emitter is a coplanar strip

line antenna fabricated on a semi-insulating (SI) GaAs
wafer. The gap distance of the emitter antenna is 200 m
and is excited with a 7-mW of focused laser beam. The
bias voltage between the coplanar strip lines of the emitter antenna is 30 V (Ebias = 1.5 kV/cm). An aplanatic
hyper-hemispherical silicon lens is attached to the back
of the THz emitter to increase the coupling efficiency of
THz pulse from the antenna to free space. Two highly resistive silicon lenses are used for focusing the THz beam
to samples with a spot size of less than 2 mm diameter. The detector crystal is 0.5-mm thick <110> ZnTe
and is gated by 1-mW probe beam pulses. A standard
electro-optic sampling (EOS) setup is used for THz signal acquisition [14]. To increase the signal-to-noise ratio,
we modulate the pump beam with a mechanical chopper
at 2 kHz. In order to prevent absorption by atmospheric
water vapor, we enclose the THz generation and detection components in an acryl box supplied with dry air.
The output signal from the balanced diode detector is
monitored with a lock-in amplifier and a computer.
2. Calculations of The Complex Refractive Index and The Dielectric Function
of Ss () to Sr () as follows [15]:
Ss ()
= () ej()
Sr ()
(1)
c0
+1
d
(2)
ns () = ()
s () = ln(
4ns ()
c0
)
() (ns () + 1)2 d
Here, d (cm) is thickness of the sample, and c0 is the

speed of light in vacuum. The imaginary part of the
refractive index, s , is related to the power absorption
coefficient, (cm1 ), as
s = c0 ()/2
where
s () =
2
4ns ()
ln(
)
d
() (ns () + 1)2
(4)
Hence, the real and the imaginary parts of the dielectric

constant are determined from the following equations:
0
s () = (ns ())2 [c0 ()/2]2

00
In THz-TDS, we are interested in measuring () =

0
00
()j () or equivalently n
() = n()j()which
is the complex index of refraction of the material, where
() = (
n())2 . The complex frequency spectra of the
reference, Sr (), and of the sample, Ss (), are calculated using numerical Fourier transforms from the timedomain waveforms sampled in the experiment. The analytic expressions for ns and s can be written in terms
of the magnitude () and the phase () of the ratio
(3)
s () = 2ns ()s () = c0 ns ()s ()/
(5)
(6)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In the present study, nine kinds of polymer materials
were examined. All specimens were manufactured by
Goodfellow Co. and are listed in Table 1. The physical
Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers Yun-Sik Jin et al.
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Fig. 2. (a) Measured THz pulses from the reference and the sample. For clarity, the sample pulses are vertically displaced.
(b) Corresponding amplitude spectra of the measured reference pulse and the sample pulses.
Fig. 3. (a) Refractive index and (b) absorption coefficient of the polymer materials.
and the electrical constants in Table 1 were provided by

the manufacturer [16].
The transmitted electric field of terahertz pulses
through the sample and the reference are recorded in
the time domain, and the corresponding frequency spectra are obtained by using numerical Fourier transforms.
Fig. 2 shows (a) the measured reference and sample
(PTFE, PA6) pulses and (b) the corresponding Fourier
transformed spectra. Every pulse curve is the average of
three individual measurements in order to increase the
signal-to-noise ratio. There is no absorption peak originating from water molecule in the reference spectrum
[17], so we can ignore the water absorption effect. The

signal-to-noise ratio in the measurement is estimated to
be higher than 1000.
The refractive indices ns () and the power absorption
coefficients s () of the nine polymer samples are calculated from the measured data by using Eqs. (2) and (4).
The calculation results are plotted in Fig. 3. The absorption curves are grouped according to type for easier
comparison. The refractive indices of the nine samples
show slow a decrease, but the variation is less than 6 %
within the investigated frequency range. In Fig. 3 (a),
the refractive indices of the materials at 1 THz and at
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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 2, August 2006
Fig. 4. (a) Real and (b) imaginary parts of the dielectric constant
the optical frequency (given by Table 1) are compared.

All the refractive indices at 1 THz are a little higher than
those at the optical frequency, except for HDPE, and we
can expect the refractive index in the terahertz range to
approach the optical value at higher frequencies.
Meanwhile, the power absorption curves show very different behaviors for different materials. The absorption
of polyaramid, ABS, and PA 6 increase quadratically
with frequency, but those of HDPE, PTFE (Teflon) and
PP are very weak and nearly constant in the THz range.
We suppose that the high absorptions of the above polymers are related with the high dielectric loss, which will
be explained below. The slowly varying refractive indices
and the small absorption coefficients of HDPE, PTFE
and PP in the terahertz region enable them to be good
candidates for THz optical materials such as lens and
windows [11].
The real and the imaginary parts of the dielectric constant can be calculated from Eqs. (5) and (6). Fig. 4
shows the recorded data for the complex dielectric constants of the nine samples. In Fig. 4 (a), the real dielectric constants of HDPE, PTFE, and PP show a feature
that is essentially the square of the dielectric constant
ns () because the absorptions by the samples are small
in the spectral region concerned and the contribution of
the absorption coefficient to the real dielectric constant
is nearly negligible in Eq. (5). Furthermore, we can
see that the real dielectric constant at low frequency obtained by a linear fit of the measured data is in good
agreement with the given value at 1 MHz in Table 1.
The power loss in the dielectric can
be expressed in
00
0
terms of the loss tangent (tan = / ). Fig. 5 shows
the relation between the power absorption coefficient and
tan at 1 THz. A strong correlation between the absorp-
Fig. 5. Relation between the absorption coefficient and the

loss tangent (tan ).
tion coefficient and the loss tangent was observed, and

this result indicates that the main mechanism of THz
field absorption is the dielectric loss caused by molecular
collisions and vibrations. The consistency of the measured data for a the given material property suggests
that our THz-TDS measurement is exact. As a result,
the refractive index and the dielectric constant in the
THz range acquire a new meaning.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The dielectric properties of various polymer materials
in the THz region have been investigated systematically
Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers Yun-Sik Jin et al.
by using a transmission THz-TDS method. The refractive indices, the power absorption coefficients, and the
complex dielectric constants of the polymers were measured and analyzed. New optical and electrical data for
the polymers were obtained, and the consistency with
the known parameters was identified. The results obtained in this study suggest that the THz-TDS method
is a useful tool for polymer characterization in the far
infrared region.
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[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
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Fattinger, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 7, 2006 (1990).
[3] D. M. Mittleman, Sensing with Terahertz Radiation
(Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2002).
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[4] Tae-In Jeon, Joo-Hiuk Son, Gye Hyuck An and Young
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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 2, August 2006, pp.

Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers

each material. From the measured dielectric properties,

A standard transmission THz TDS system is employed

Fig. 1. Experimental setup for transmission THz timedomain spectroscopy.

ysjin@keri.re.kr; Fax: +82-55-280-1490

the detector crystal. The THz emitter is a coplanar strip

2. Calculations of The Complex Refractive Index and The Dielectric Function

Here, d (cm) is thickness of the sample, and c0 is the

Hence, the real and the imaginary parts of the dielectric

s () = (ns ())2 [c0 ()/2]2

In THz-TDS, we are interested in measuring () =

s () = 2ns ()s () = c0 ns ()s ()/

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers Yun-Sik Jin et al.

and the electrical constants in Table 1 were provided by

[17], so we can ignore the water absorption effect. The

the optical frequency (given by Table 1) are compared.

Fig. 5. Relation between the absorption coefficient and the

tion coefficient and the loss tangent was observed, and

Terahertz Dielectric Properties of Polymers Yun-Sik Jin et al.

Yamaguchi, K. Yamamoto, M. Tany and M. Hangyo,

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