STTR Phase I: CMOS-Compatible Oxide Films for Tunable Microwave Technology

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to reduce the cost of RF hardware, enabling wider adoption of new generations of mobile devices and services for Internet of Things applications. The project has the potential to help transform a number of sectors, including medicine and healthcare monitoring and diagnostics, transportation safety and infrastructure, air and water quality monitoring, and disaster warning and recovery efforts, particularly where wired infrastructure is inadequate or non-existent. The project will potentially remove design constraints for hardware developers seeking to directly incorporate RF tunability within their products. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses a persistent materials selection and processing challenge. Currently available families of functional materials typically require high-temperature processing and cannot be incorporated directly within the manufacturing of electronic devices for mobile communications, preventing facile and highly efficient tuning of frequencies. In this project, well-integrated multi-scale materials design, simulation, film growth, scalable processing and properties measurements will be employed to produce and optimize the performance of new tunable dielectric materials. The project will result in high-performance, manufacturing process-compatible tunable devices incorporating a new dielectric film material obtained through a much lower-temperature.