Temperature dependence of reconfigurable bandstop filters using vanadium dioxide switches

In this letter we report and investigate the temperature dependency of various radio frequency parameters (RF) for a fabricated reconfigurable bandstop filter with vanadium dioxide (VO2) switches measured up to 55 GHz. Here the insulator to metal (ITM) and metal to insulator transition (MIT) hysteresis of the VO2 thin film influence on the RF characteristics of the filters is analyzed from 25 °C and 120 °C in heating and cooling. The resonance frequency and maximum insertion loss (IL) stability and sensitivity with temperature variations are explored. It is noticed that increasing the temperature with 50 °C from 25 °C (or decreasing it with 50 °C from 120 °C) will result in a less than 1% fractional frequency shift in respect to the off and on resonance frequencies. The sharp DC conductivity levels variations of the VO2 thin film around the transition temperatures translate into sharp effects on the resonance characteristics of the filters. On the contrary, the maximum IL levels are less sensitive to the DC films sharp conductivity changes around the VO2 transition temperature. Last, we see that the RF parameters in heating and cooling at 80 °C, above (but close to) the DC transition temperatures of VO2 exhibit completely different resonance frequencies. The RF results reported close to the transition temperatures for the VO2 thin films can diverge in heating and cooling, thus of a more insightful understanding of VO2 reconfigurable RF devices has to include temperature dependent measurements at various temperatures below MIT and ITM in the RF ranges too