Improvement in tunability and dielectric loss of (Ba0.5Sr0.5)TiO3 capacitors using seed layers on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates

The absence of a low dielectric constant layer at the barium strontium titanate (BST)/Pt interface and a decreased roughness are critical issues in the production of (Ba0.5Sr0.5)TiO3 thin films with high tunabilities and low losses. An improvement in dielectric properties was achieved by the insertion of seed layers at the BST/Pt interface by pulsed laser deposition. The higher tunability can be attributed to (100) texturing of the BST films, which is independent of grain size and grain morphologies, thus leading to a variation in seed layer thicknesses. The tunability and dielectric constant of 1600-Angstrom-thick BST films showed a maximum of 53% and 720, respectively, at a seed layer thickness of 100 Angstrom. Dielectric loss is dependent on the roughness of BST films and reached a minimum of 0.8% at a root mean square roughness of 28 A. The maximum figures of merit, defined as the ratio of tunability to dielectric loss, of approximately 58 at 100 kHz and 198 kV/cm were obtained at a seed layer thickness of 70 Angstrom. The optimized seed layer thickness for BST deposition onto Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates plays an important role in maintaining the high tunabilities and low loss, which are suitable for microwave device applications.