Akoustis Technologies has announced a significant performance improvement in its patented single-crystal BAW technology, which the Company believes satisfies resonator requirements to produce commercial, high-band RF filters 4G/LTE, Wi-Fi, emerging 5G and other wireless applications.
The Company achieved a quality factor (Q) of 2,914 and a technology figure-of-merit (FOM) of 152 by combining second generation single-crystal piezoelectric material with improvements in resonator design and fabrication. Both achievements are approximately 40% higher than the last demonstrated performance reported by the Company on August 8, 2016.
The results reported were for 72-ohm resonators operating at approximately 2.5 GHz with a range of K-squared values from 5.2% to 7.1%, which were obtained from experimental devices targeting Q improvement. Such K-squared values are de-embedded, meaning that any effect of on-chip passive circuit elements present in our RF filter process is subtracted. K-squared is an important parameter that determines the bandwidth of RF filters. Higher K-squared performance enables wider bandwidth BAW RF filters.
The Akoustis team has demonstrated incredible progress in 2016, which includes the advances made in their single-crystal piezoelectric materials and delivering an 8-fold improvement in the quality factor (Q) of our resonator technology. Akoustis co-Chairman, Jerry Neal believes that the performance reported positions the Company to transition from a development-stage R&D technology company into a pure-play, high-band BAW RF filter product company.
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 as compared to conventional polycrystalline BAW technology deployed today. Superior performance is driven by the significant advances made in the single-crystal piezoelectric materials and the resonator-filter process technology. The piezoelectric constant and material composition drive electro-mechanical coupling, which enables higher filter bandwidth. In the case of operating frequency, high sound velocity in high-purity piezoelectric materials allows signals to propagate faster in the RF filter. The Company’s single-crystal piezoelectric materials offer high-thermal conductivity along the path of heat flow, greatly improving the high-power handling capability of the RF filter.
Akoustis continues to meet with multiple design clients and potential strategic partners to share its single-crystal resonator and RF filter results.
