Ti/TiO2/SiO2 multilayer thin films with enhanced spectral selectivity for optical narrow bandpass filters

Thin film-based optical sensors have been attracting increasing interest for use in developing technologies such as biometrics. Multilayered dielectric thin films with different refractive indices have been utilized to modulate the optical properties in specific wavelength bands for spectral selectivity of Thin Film Narrow Bandpass Filters (TFNBFs). Progress in TFNBF design has been made with the incorporation of metallic thin films. Narrower bandwidths with higher transmittance have been achieved in specific spectral bands. In this work, Ti/TiO2/SiO2 based multilayer thin films were prepared using pulsed-DC reactive sputtering. Computer simulations using the Essential Macleod Program allowed the optimal number of layers and thickness of the multilayer thin films to be determined to efficiently tailor the optical path transmitting specific wavelength bands. The addition of Ti metal layers within dielectric (TiO2/SiO2) multilayer thin films significantly changes the cutoff frequency of transmittance at specific wavelengths. Representative 26 multilayer films consisting of Ti, TiO2, and SiO2 show lower transmittance of 10.29% at 400 nm and 10.48% at 680 nm. High transmittance of 80.42% at 485 nm was observed, which is expected to improve the spectral selectivity of the TFNBF. This work provides a contribution to future simulation based design strategy based on experimental thin film engineering for potential industrial development opportunities such as optical biometrics.

Miniaturized trisection BPF design using size-reduced substrate integrated coaxial resonators

The contribution of this work is to propose miniaturized trisection bandpass filters (BPFs) using size-reduced substrate integrated coaxial resonators (SICRs). The applied SICRs are operated under a coaxial mode. The occupied circuit area of the SICR developed from its structurally similar one, the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity, is only 6.2% that of the latter, corresponding to a circuit-area reduction rate of 93.8%. The cross-coupling between the input and output resonators can be either a magnetic or electric coupling for locating the transmission zero near either the upper or lower passband edge, respectively. Sample trisection BPFs with magnetic/electric cross-couplings are built for experimental verification. Agreements between measured and simulated data are observed. These miniaturized trisection BPFs with a freely switchable transmission zero are endowed with the advantage of an excellent circuit-area efficiency in the category of SICR and SIW cavity trisection BPFs.