A New Method for Electrical Characterization of Ferroelectric Thin Films at Microwave Frequencies

Abstract

In this work, varactor shunt switches (VSS) are utilized as test structures for characterization of ferroelectric thin films. The varactor shunt switch consists of coplanar waveguide input and output feed lines, and a shunt parallel plate varactor. The simplicity of the device structure and the ease of modeling the device allow one to match the experimental scattering parameters (S parameters) to the modeled results, and hence characterize the dielectric properties of the ferroelectric thin-film accurately. This paper illustrates the precise characterization of the ferroelectric thin-films using the VSS as a test structure.

Keywords:

• Varactor shunt switches
• capacitive test structure
• microwave characterization of ferroelectric thin films

Acknowledgment

The author acknowledges the late Dr. Rand Biggers for the processing of BST thin films used in our research. The author is grateful for all the contributions of Dr. Biggers to the author's research group. Author also acknowledges the technical support of Dr. Angela Campbell, Mr. Robert Neidhard, and Mr. Scott Axtell, at the Air Force Research Laboratory.