Ferroelectroc Na0.5K0.5NbO3 films for voltabe tunable microwave devices

Single phase Na0.5K0.5NbO3 (NKN) thin films have been pulsed laser deposited on Al2O3(01-12), LaAlO3(001), and MgO(001) single crystal substrates as well as onto SiO2/Si(001) wafers to demonstrate films feasibility for voltage tunable microwave device applications. NKN film texture has been found to be quite different on three different single crystals: highly c-axis oriented on Al2O3, "cube-on-cube" epitaxial quality on LaAlO3, bi-axial textures on MgO, while NKN films grown on Si substrate with various thickness of SiO2 buffer layer possess highly c-axis oriented quadrupled structure. NKN film interdigital capacitors fabricated onto single crystal oxide substrates showed tunability of 30-40 % and dissipation factor of 0.01-0.02 at 1 MHz and applied electric field of 100kV/cm. Microwave frequency measurements for NKN/Si varactors yield 13 % tunability and dielectric loss tan delta as low as 0.012 at 40 GHz under 200 kV/cm applied bias.