Vanadium dioxide thin film series single-pole single throw switch

Abstract

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films have unique insulator to metal transition above the critical temperature of 72 °C. In this research, VO2 thin films were deposited on a sapphire substrate for thermally controllable RF/microwave switching devices with integrated heating coil. The VO2 thin film based devices showed insulator performance at room temperature and metallic state (low resistive phase) at 80 °C. Switching devices designed using a VO2 series varistor showed good isolation (<; -30 dB) and low insertion loss (> -5 dB) up to 20 GHz.