Nano-granular Co-Fe-Al-Q Soft Ferromagnetic Thin Films for RF Electromagnetic-noise Filters

Co-Fe-Al-O nano-granular thin films with high electrical resistivity, fabricated by radio frequency magnetron sputtering under an $Ar+O_2$ atmosphere, are found to show good soft magnetic properties in the GHz frequency range. The real part value of the relative permeability is 260 at low frequencies and this value is maintained up to the GHz frequency range. A non-integrated type noise filter on a coplanar waveguide transmission line is demonstrated by using the Co-Fe-Al-O nano-granular thin film with the dimensions of $4\;mm(l){\times}4\;mm(w){\times}0.1\;{\mu}m(t)$. The insertion loss is very low being less than 0.3 dB and this low value is maintained up to 2 GHz. At a ferromagnetic resonance frequency of 3.3 GHz, the degree of noise suppression is measured to be 3 dB. This level of noise attenuation is small for real applications, but there is much room for further improvement by increasing the magnetic volume and integrating the magnetic thin film into the CPW transmission line.