(1 1 0)etextured BaSn
0.15
Ti
0.85
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/BaZr
0.2
Ti
0.8
O
3
multilayers with enhanced tunable performance
Shihui Yu
a
, Wentao Lou
a
, Chunmei Zhang
a
, Muying Wu
b
, Leijiao Ge
c
,
*
, Helei Dong
d
,
**
,
Lingxia Li
a
a
School of Microelectronics and Key Laboratory for Advanced Ceramics and Machining Technology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin,
300072, PR China
b
School of Electronic Engineering and Intelligentization, Dongguan University of Technology, Guangdong Dongguan, 523808, PR China
c
School of Electrical Information and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, PR China
d
School of Instrument and Electronics, North University of China, Tai Yuan, 030051, PR China
article info
Article history:
Received 23 September 2018
Received in revised form
4 December 2018
Accepted 5 December 2018
Available online 6 December 2018
Keywords:
Surfaces and interfaces
Thin films
Vapor deposition
Dielectric response
Oxidation
abstract
BaSn
0.15
Ti
0.85
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/BaZr
0.2
Ti
0.8
O
3
multilayer, BaSn
0.15
Ti
0.85
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
and Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/
BaZr
0.2
Ti
0.8
O
3
bilayer composite thin films are deliberately grown on Pt-Si substrates by pulsed laser
deposition. The multilayers exhibit preferential growth along the (1 1 0) direction and reveal prominently
enhanced dielectric tunable performance compared to the previous reported single-layer dielectric
tunable thin films, the BaSn
0.15
Ti
0.85
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
and Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/BaZr
0.2
Ti
0.8
O
3
bilayers at room
temperature. For the multilayers, a large tunability of 71.3% under bias electric field of 400 kV/cm is
achieved, while the dielectric loss is 0.0063 and the leak current density is ~1.0 10
10
A/cm
2
at 300 kV/
cm. Calculation of figure of merit (FoM) shows a large value of 113. Such outstanding properties have
suggested that BaSn
0.15
Ti
0.85
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/BaZr
0.2
Ti
0.8
O
3
multilayer composite thin films are excellent
candidates for electrically steerable applications.
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The characteristic of integration and miniaturization of electri-
cally tunable devices strongly demands high-quality tunable thin
films with high dielectric tunability (50%), low loss tangent
(0.01) and large dielectric constant (200) [1e4]. Pb-free ferro-
electric barium zirconate titanate (BaZr
x
Ti
1x
O
3
), barium strontium
titanate (Ba
x
Sr
1x
TiO
3
), and barium tin titanium (BaTi
1-x
Sn
x
O
3
) thin
films have been widely investigated for integration into electrically
tunable devices such as dielectric tunable capacitors, resonators,
antennas, phase shifters, tunable filters, electrical controlled oscil-
lators and so on [1,3,5,6]. However, the high dielectric loss
(generally 10
2
) strongly inhibits their further practical applica-
tions [7]. In order to reduce the dielectric loss of BST thin films,
great efforts have been made in the past decades [8e11 ]. Among
various approaches, film texturing and dielectric/ferroelectric
layered composite are considered to be two effective methods for
loss decreasing. Nonetheless, the extent of reduction is very limited
through the film texturing, due to the influence of inherent char-
acteristic of ferroelectric thin films. For the layered composites, the
dielectric constants of common dielectric layer materials such as
MgO [12], SiN [13], Bi
1.5
MgNb
1.5
O
7
(BMN) [14], and Bi
1.5
ZnNb
1.5
O
7
(BZN) [15] are low, which incline to consume a majority of apply
bias voltage, resulting in a deteriorated tunable performance of the
heterolayers. Fabricating higheperformance tunable thin films are
still challenging.
Recently, Zhao group [16] studied the BaTiO
3
/BaSrTiO
3
/SrTiO
3
multilayer composite thin films fabricated by sol-gel method, they
found that the multilayers had an improved dielectric performance.
Zhu group [17] prepared the BaSrTi
1.1
O
3
/BaSrTi
1.05
O
3
/BaSrTiO
3
multilayer composite thin films by radio frequency magnetron
sputtering, they also found that the dielectric loss tangent could be
certainly decreased by the design of the multilayer structure while
the dielectric tunability was little changed. Peng et al. [18] fabri-
cated Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
Ti
1þy
O
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
TiO
3
/Ba
0.6
Sr
0.4
Ti
1þy
O
3
multilayer
structure films. They reported that the multilayer structure was
beneficial to lowering the dielectric loss and enhancing the
* Corresponding author.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Legendglj99@tju.edu.cn (L. Ge), donghelei@nuc.edu.cn
(H. Dong).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Alloys and Compounds
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jalcom
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2018.12.074
0925-8388/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Journal of Alloys and Compounds 781 (2019) 689e695