Akoustis has completed the installation of manufacturing equipment at its New York plant to process wafers from the time they are received as raw wafers up to the packaging of the fully developed RF filter die. The capital build-out consolidates the company’s epitaxy, wafer fabrication and trimming work centers under one roof, establishing the industry’s first single crystal BAW RF filter fab. Key manufacturing tools have been added eliminating previously outsourced pieces of Akoustis’ wafer fabrication process. Qualification of the tools has commenced and is expected to be completed this quarter.
Akoustis has added scalable metal-organic chemical vapor-phase deposition (MOCVD) manufacturing to produce its patented, single crystal piezoelectric materials. Advanced single crystal materials allow the company to exploit unique material science to address critical RF filter requirements for existing and next generation communications applications, including emerging 5G wireless. The MOCVD capability is configured for 150 mm diameter wafers and is forward compatible up to 200 mm diameter.
In June 2017, Akoustis completed the strategic acquisition of a 120,000 sq. ft. wafer manufacturing facility and operations located in Canandaigua, NY to internalize production of its patented, single crystal BAW RF filters. The acquisition included 150-mm wafer manufacturing tools, 57-acres of real property and an ongoing MEMS business.
Akoustis is pioneering next-generation materials 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. Akoustis has announced four customer engagements for its premium high band BAW RF filters in frequencies ranging from 1.5 GHz to 5.2 GHz and remains focused on customer design engineering engagements, as well as technology and product qualification for commercial manufacturing in first-half of calendar year 2018.
