Authors
Mashael M Altaiary, A F Qasrawi, Seham R Alharbi
Published in
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland). Volume 26. Issue 20. Oct 19, 2026. Epub Oct 19, 2026.
Abstract
Amorphous Ge thin films coated with rare-earth yttrium (Y) and ytterbium (Yb) nanosheets were investigated as multifunctional materials for electronic and microwave applications. Electrical characterization of as-grown Ge and coated Ge (Y, Yb) structures over 30-300 K and 0.01-6.0 GHz showed that Y and Yb coatings enhanced the low-temperature electrical conductivity by factors of 23.7 and 11.3, respectively. Charge transport was governed by thermally activated conduction and variable range hopping above about 120 K, while tunneling dominated in the 20-120 K range, indicating that rare-earth coating strongly modifies carrier localization and interfacial electronic states in Ge. In the 0.001-1.8 GHz range, Ge/Y and Ge/Yb also exhibited negative conductance and negative capacitance, supporting their potential for signal processing and sensing technologies. In parallel, sub-6 GHz two-port microwave measurements showed that the Y-coated sample exhibited the broadest common matched frequency range of 2.01-3.90 GHz and a balanced two-port response near 2.40 GHz. For Ge/Y, the minimum reflection coefficients were S11 = -37.84 dB at 2.61 GHz and S22 = -38.06 dB at 2.34 GHz, while S21 and S12 reached -24.12 dB and -23.96 dB, respectively, at 0.21 GHz. These results establish rare-earth coating as an effective approach for tuning the electrical and microwave network response of amorphous Ge thin-film structures and motivate their further investigation for sub-6 GHz microwave and wireless-device applications.
PMID:
42944472
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 27 Oct 2026.
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