Integral Wave Technologies (formerly known as Arkansas Microelectronic Development Corporation) proposes to develop a process for growing ferroelectric, polycrystalline barium titinate (BaTiO3) thin-films, by anodic oxidation of co-sputtered barium-titanium films (BaTi). Though films of this nature find applications in several electrical devices, Integral Wave will utilize this novel technology, if successful, for integral thin-film capacitors and optical waveguides. By utilizing this novel method of ferroelectric formation, Integral Wave will be able to obtain thin, uniform ferroelectric films that exhibit dielectric constants from approximately 150 to 1500. This will allow the fabrication of integral thin-film capacitors, which exhibit tremendous volume and space saving benefits over traditional discrete capacitors, with very large capacitance densities, from 1µF/cm2 up to 13µF/cm2. These values are over 2000 times greater than the value exhibited by the leading commercially available integral dielectric. The low loss characteristic of these films will also allow Integral Wave to explore the potential application of this material in optical devices. Crystalline ferroelectrics have also found numerous applications as additional passive and active optical components, such as couplers, taps, attenuators, modulators, switches and wavelength converters. Anticipated Benefits/Commercial Applications: The main applications are thin-film decoupling capacitors that can either be surface mounted or embedded between layers of a printed circuit board, or substrate, and optical waveguides. Additional passive and active optical components, such as couplers, taps, attenuators, modulators, switches and wavelength converters, also exist.
Keywords: capacitors, integral, thin-film , waveguides, embedded
