Silicon substrate integrated high Q-factor parallel-plate ferroelectric varactors for microwave/millimeterwave applications

Parallel-plate Ba0.25Sr0.75TiO3 (BST) varactors with a record high Q factor are fabricated on Si substrate. At 45 GHz the Q factor is about 40, and the tuneability at 25 V is more than 40% in the measured frequency range 0.045–45 GHz. The improvement in the Q factor is achieved by using a thick bottom electrode consisting of Pt (50 nm)/Au (0.5 μm) allowing us to reduce the microwave losses associated with metal layers. The BST films exhibit relatively high permittivity (150) at zero bias and high resistivity (1010 Ω cm) at fields up to 700 kV/cm.