Abstract
The thermal stress response of YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7-x/ superconducting microstrip lines on GaAs, Si, Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ and MgO dielectric substrates was studied using the finite-element method. Detailed stress distributions near critical areas of the systems were calculated to understand the composite mechanical behavior. It is shown that the resulting stress fields are very high (large enough to cause cracking in the composite structure) for some of the dielectric materials due to the thermal expansion mismatch between the superconducting material and the dielectric substrate materials. YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7-x/ superconducting microstrip lines in MgO displayed the best thermal mechanical properties of the four dielectric materials.