Growth of pure and BFO doped KCl crystals by Czochralski technique and fabrication of microstrip patch antenna for GHz applications

Abstract

Large sized pure and 0.1 mol% BiFeO3 (BFO) doped KCl single crystals were grown by Czochralski technique. Structural parameters were confirmed by powder XRD and single crystal XRD. EDX analysis was used to determine the elemental composition of BFO and KCl crystal. Photoluminescence confirmed that BFO acts as defect quenching agent for KCl single crystal which improved its optical transparency. Doping of BFO in KCl single crystal increased its hardness as measured by a Vicker’s microhardness test. The effect of BFO on dielectric constant and dielectric loss of KCl crystal, at various temperature and frequencies was studied. The low dielectric constant viz. 4.5 and 5.8 for pure and BFO doped KCl was helpful in designing and fabricating patch antenna in GHz frequency. As a result of BFO doping, the resonant frequency of microstrip patch antenna can be tuned at 5.40 GHz from 6.01 GHz for the KCl single crystal.