Applications of High-Temperature Superconductors in Microwave Integrated Circuits

A brief review is given of recent publications showing that the applications of hightemperature superconductors (HTS) in microwave technologies have become an integral part of industrial business. The basic components of microwave devices are HTS epitaxial films on dielectric substrates. It is shown that the properties of interfaces between the substrates and HTS films are crucially important for obtaining high-quality HTS films. The change of the structure in the process of film growth is related to the initial stage of HTS nucleation at the interface between the substrate and the film. The film surface resistance at microwave frequencies depends on the HTS film structure. It is known that one can decrease the surface resistance, which will permit designing higher-quality microwave-microelectronics components to operate at cryogenic temperatures by improving the film structure. A discussion is given how to improve the HTS film microwave properties to make possible industrial production of high-performance HTS devices and subsystems.