Achieving high breakdown strength and figure of merit of Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 films through coating a Y3Fe5O12 layer

Low tunability and figure of merit significantly limited the application of Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (BST) ferroelectric film, which originates from the low electric breakdown strength and high dielectric loss of BST layer. Garnet structured Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) exhibits the merits of good microwave dielectric property and a much high resistivity, which are helpful for enhancing the breakdown strength and suppressing the dielectric loss. In this work, Y3Fe5O12/Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (YIG/BST) composite films were fabricated via chemical solution deposition method. The composite films exhibited a low dielectric loss (0.006) and an almost frequency independent dielectric constant in a frequency range from 10 kHz to 1 MHz. The electric breakdown strength was significantly enhanced from less than 400 kV/cm to around 800 kV/cm through coating a YIG layer, causing an excellent tunability of 72.84% and an ultra-high figure of merit (FOM=118) at 800 kV/cm in YIG/BST film. It is physically clarified that the conduction loss plays an important role in BST film while the intrinsic loss is the dominate factor for the YIG/BST composite films.