Effect of dc biasing on YBCO/STO/LAO tunable microstrip filters

Abstract

One of the critical design aspects in ferroelectric tunable microstrip filters is choosing the right bias configuration, for large tunability as well as to maintain the filter's passband characteristics. This work is based on strontium titanate (STO) ferroelectric thin-film based tunable microstrip filters for cryogenic temperature applications. Large tunability factors have been demonstrated in YBCO/STO/LAO two-layered microstrip filters when operated at or below 77 K. The effect of the dc electric field (primarily responsible for tuning) and critical design parameters such as the insertion loss, frequency tunability, return loss, and bandwidth of superconductor/ferroelectric/dielectric microstrip tunable K-band microwave filters is discussed in this work.

Key Words:

• Ferroelectric thin-films
• microstrip lines
• K-band microwave frequencies
• tunable bandpass filters
• YBCO high temperature superconducting thin-films