Akoustis Technologies has announced their first demonstration of 5.8 GHz single-crystal AlN resonators for BAW RF filter applications. The resonator technology incorporates Akoustis’ single-crystal piezoelectric materials, which were scaled to achieve the 5.8 GHz resonance frequency. These high frequency resonators use thinner single-crystal piezoelectric materials which exhibit high K-squared and high acoustic velocity-consistent with lower frequency devices made from thicker single-crystal materials. Results demonstrated were measured from 150-mm wafers, which were manufactured at a New York Fab that is scheduled to be acquired by Akoustis.
The technical results of the demonstration will be presented on June 9th at IEEE 2017 International Microwave Symposium (IMS) during a workshop called “WFL: Materials and Devices for Next-Generation High-Q RF Resonators and Filters”. The Akoustis workshop presentation is titled: “High Frequency, High Power, Single Crystal III-N BAW Devices”.
Akoustis is currently consolidating and optimizing its single-crystal BAW process technology while modeling and designing new 5 GHz BAW RF filter circuits. The high frequency RF resonator technologytargets 5 GHz Wi-Fi routers and LTE-U mobile market applications.
According to Cisco’s 2017 Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast update, Wi-Fi traffic from both mobile devices and Wi-Fi-only devices together will account for 49% of total IP traffic by 2020 (equivalent to 100 Exabytes per month), up from 42% in 2015. In order to support HD media streaming, multiple devices and online gaming, new TriBand Wi-Fi routers (incorporating two separate 5 GHz bands) offer aggregate link speeds of 3200 Mbps. Each 5 GHz band offers speeds upto 1300 Mbps and creates opportunities for premium BAW RF filters.
On March 24, 2017, Akoustis announced that it had entered into definitive agreements to acquire a 120,000 Sq. Ft. Wafer Manufacturing Facility,and STC-MEMS, a semiconductor wafer manufacturing operation with associated 150-mm wafer production tools and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) business, as well as 57-acres of real estate associated with the facility located in Canandaigua, New York. The transaction enables the Company to control the manufacturing of its BAW RF filters.
Akoustis is pioneering next-generation material science to address the market requirements for improved RF filters - targeting higher bandwidth, higher operating frequencies and higher output power compared to incumbent polycrystalline BAW technology deployed today. Superior performance is driven by the significant advances of high-purity, single-crystal piezoelectric materials and the resonator-filter process technology. The advanced material properties drive electro-mechanical coupling, which translates to wide filter bandwidth. High-band RF filters are achieved by leveraging the Company’s high-sound velocity, single-crystal piezoelectric materials. These single-crystal piezoelectric materials offer high-thermal conductivity along the path of heat flow, enabling high-power handling capability of the RF filter.
