High-temperature superconducting delay lines and filters on sapphire and thinned LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates

The very low microwave surface resistance of high-temperature-superconductor (HTS) thin films allows the realization of microwave devices with performance superior to those made by conventional technology. Superconducting delay lines, for example, have very low propagation loss and dispersion. Long, low-loss, superconducting delay lines on both thinned LaAlO/sub 3/ and sapphire substrates are presented. Delay lines with 27- and 44-ns delay have been made, for the first time, on 5-cm-diameter 254- and 127- mu m-thick LaAlO/sub 3/ substrates, respectively. The insertion losses at 77 K and 6 GHz are 6 and 16 dB, respectively. Delay lines with 9-ns delay have, for the first time, been produced on M-plane sapphire substrates and demonstrate, at 77 K, an insertion loss of 1.0 dB at 6 GHz. A 2.5%-bandwidth 10 GHz four pole edge-coupled bandpass filter on M-plane sapphire substrates is also reported. The filter has minimum insertion loss of less than 0.5 dB at 9.75 GHz and 71 K.<>