Low frequency characterisation of laser ablation deposited thin Na0.5K0.5NbO3 (NKN) films for microwave application

Abstract

Experimental results on three types of Na0.5K0.5NbO3 (NKN) film capacitor structures are presented. The epitaxial NKN thin films have been deposited on (100) Si (high resistivity), SiO2/Si (low resistivity) and Pt/Si (low resistivity) substrates using laser ablation deposition. Both straight slot and interdigital electrode have been deposited on top of the NKN films. The leakage current and low frequency dielectric properties (I-V, C-V, tanδ-V) of the structures have been measured at 1 MHz as a function of electric field at room temperature. In all three types of capacitor structures the leakage currents in a-b plane are very small, while along c-axis there are extremely large leakage currents. On low resistivity silicon substrates the tunability of the dielectric permittivity is about 12% and loss tangent is low also. On high resistivity (ρ>10 kOhm cm) silicon substrate the tunability at 1 MHz is extremely high, about 10 times, and the losses are also high. On the other hand at microwave frequencies the losses are small (tanδ<0.1 at 50 GHz), which make this structure useful for application in microwave devices.