Tunable Transmission Line With Nanopatterned Thin Films for Smart RF Applications

A concept of tunable transmission line (TL) enabled with nanopatterned ferromagnetic permalloy (Py) and ferroelectric lead zirconium titanate (PZT) thin films is presented. The permittivity (ε_r) of PZT is electrical tunable with dc voltage, and the permeability (μ_r) of Py is electrical tunable with dc current, thus simultaneous electric tunable capacitance and inductance capability are provided for the proposed TL. The proposed TL has been fabricated and compared with a regular line without nanofilm patterns. Py is patterned with the dimensions of 10 μm × 150 nm and thickness of 100 nm for high built-in anisotropy field. The ferromagnetic resonant frequency is measured to be 6.3 GHz. Compared with the regular TL, the implemented TL has only generated 0.05 dB additional insertion loss at 4 GHz. The electrical tunability of both the capacitance and the inductance has been demonstrated for the first time. By applying the varied dc current (0-150 mA) and the dc voltage (0-20 V), measured results have shown that the proposed line can provide 90° phase shift from 3.75 to 4 GHz with the fixed characteristic impedance. The continuous tuning of the characteristics impedance from 59 to 61 Ω under suitable bias conditions shows its promise as an impedance matching network. Tunable range of both the phase shifter and the impedance matching network can be further increased with thicker and multilayer films.