Tuneable electric antenna apparatus including ferroelectric material

摘要

The disclosure relates to ferroelectric and superconducting thin films used in combination to produce low-loss passive microwave and millimeter wave devices which are frequency tuneable. Various metal oxide superconducting and ferroelectric thin films can be deposited in numerous multilayer geometries via a variety of deposition techniques to produce devices which can manipulate microwave and millimeter wave signals through the application of voltage bias signals across the ferroelectric films. Numerous superconducting microwave and millimeter wave devices, including delay lines, phase shifters, resonators, oscillators, filters, electrically-small antennas, half-loop antennas, directional couplers, patch antennas, and various radiative gratings, are made frequency-tuneable by utilizing voltage-tuneable capacitor structures fabricated from voltage-biased ferroelectric thin films. Tuneable antenna arrays are also disclosed incorporating the combined superconducting and ferroelectric thin film structures and geometries which allow for electrical steering of beam patterns by the application of one or more voltage bias signals to ferroelectric thin film gratings.