Flexible and lithography-compatible copper foil substrates for ferroelectric thin films

A process has been developed for preparing a low surface roughness copper foil by evaporation and subsequent peel-off of copper metal layers on glass slides. These 15 micron thick substrates exhibited roughness values between 1 and 2 nm root-mean-square (RMS) and 9 nm RMS over 25 μm² and 100 μm² analysis areas, respectively. The deposition and crystallization of barium strontium titanate layers were demonstrated on these smoother variant foils. The fully processed dielectric layers exhibited field tunability greater than 5:1, and could withstand fields in excess of 750 kV/cm. High field loss tangents below 0.007 were observed, making these materials excellent candidates for microwave devices. Finally, a process of lamination and contact lithography was used to demonstrate patterning of micron-scale features suitable for microwave circuit element designs.