Save
Email
Print
ShareOct. 18, 2010 — The explosion of portable communication devices that we enjoy today -- such as cell and smart phones, Bluetooth hands-free units, and wireless Internet networks -- has resulted in part from the development of a wide variety of integrated circuits that create, process and receive the microwave frequencies on which the communication is based.
Continuing demand for higher performance over a wider range of frequencies has shrunk the physical size of circuits and fueled the development of new materials in thin-film forms, tested in detail over the entire microwave spectrum (1-50GHz).
In the August 9 edition of the technical journal Applied Physics Letters, published by the American Institute of Physics, two teams of researchers from China and France report success in making and testing tiny high-frequency capacitors made from a complex manmade mineral: barium strontium titanate (BST). By introducing an ultrathin (1.2 nanometer) titanium oxide seed layer, the researchers made thin BST films that exhibited excellent microwave properties up to 40 GHz.
"Our recent achievements certainly pave the way for realizing high-frequency microwave applications using thin-film BST capacitors," said Prof. Xianlin Dong from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This research is supported by grants from China's National Basic Research Program, the Shanghai Rising-Star Program, and the Hundred Talent Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Institute of Physics, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Freddy Ponchel, Jean-Fançois Legier, Caroline Soyer, Denis Rémiens, Jean Midy, Tuami Lasri, Guillaume Guéguan. Rigorous extraction tunability of Si-integrated Ba0.3Sr0.7TiO3 thin film up to 60 GHz. Applied Physics Letters, 2010; 96 (25): 252906 DOI: 10.1063/1.3454772
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
more 
