Proposal: Apparatus for Sensing the Effect of Surface Roughness on the Surface Resistance of Metals.

The root mean square surface roughness Rq of metals is detrimental in several microwave applications. Rq characterization methods are thus largely used and of great interest. In this work, a new dielectric loaded resonator (DR) design is proposed to evaluate the surface resistance variations of samples with different Rq. The new design is thought to make the measurement accuracy, usually strongly affected by the measurement repeatability, suitable for this study. We analyze the measurement method's sensitivity and accuracy in order to assess the possibility of using this new DR design for highly accurate surface resistance measurements sensitive to Rq variations.