High Quality Factor, Thin-Film, Electrically Tunable Varactors and Filters

Toyon Research Corporation proposes to significantly advance the state-of-the-art in varactor technology by maturing a varactor diode design that has have a predicted minimum quality factor (1/RC) of well over 400 at 2 GHz and minimum tuning ration of 3:1. Initial designs of the device are complete and on-wafer measurements of some of the critical devices features were made in Phase I. The Phase II devices will be fabricated at the University of California Santa Barbara's Nanofabrication Facility. Three device runs are planned in Phase II and they will include accompanying investigative runs focusing only on anode junction and ohmic contact performance. The final device run will include dice-able devices in two configurations: single-device, and anti-series. The diced devices will then be characterized off-wafer in UCSB's mm-Wave laboratory. The varactors will be the foundation of a tunable multi-pole bandpass filter, which will also be designed and prototyped in the Phase II. The filter will be tunable across 1.4 - 2.6 GHz at minimum. The devices will be commercialized in Phase II along with ruggedized versions of the filter.