Nanodielectrics with Nonlinear Response for High Power Microwave Generation

Fine grained BST ceramics with high density has attractive properties including nonlinearity, low dielectric loss and high dielectric breakdown strength to realize high tunability. In Phase I program we demonstrated that modification of powder characteristics and composition in nano BST powder resulted in greater than 65% tunability at 250KV/cm with ~500KV/cm breakdown strength and Q value greater than 200 at 2GHz. In this Phase II program we propose to further modify the process to find the optimum properties for high power microwave generation application and research on scale up of the process for larger size and high volume prototype sample production. BENEFIT: Improved tunable dielectrics in general are applicable to a broad range of potential uses including broadband wireless communications and data transmission for which markets are very large. TRS¡¯s primary emaphases for this work will be high power military microwave systems which are likely to require bulk, high quality tunable materials rather than thin film devices. The development and fabrication of such materials in TRS¡¯s core competency.