Direct-write inkjet printing for fabrication of barium strontium titanate-based tunable circuits

Tunable capacitors with up to 30% tuning and a loss tangent (tanδ) less than 0.002 at 1 MHz were fabricated from Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (BST) films using inkjet-printed liquid metalorganic precursors. BST films of various thicknesses were produced by printing multiple stacks of the individual inkjet-printed layers. The dielectric constant of the printed films increased as a function of thickness. The largest dielectric constant, 1000, and the highest tunability, 30%, were measured on a 420 nm thick film, the thickest film studied in this work. Spray-printed silver contacts were employed and demonstrated good adhesion and good electrical contact to the inkjet-printed BST films. This also demonstrated proof of principle for direct-write printing of metal contacts onto BST films from metalorganic sources.