Enhancing RF Bulk Acoustic Wave Devices: Multiphysical Modeling and Performance

The rapid proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and intelligent wearables is proof of the global success of high-performance RF acoustic devices based on bulk acoustic wave (BAW) and surface acoustic wave (SAW) technologies. Advanced wireless communication standards, such as 4G/LTE and the upcoming 5G, make the implementation of new RF features (power handling, wider bandwidth, and reconfigurability) mandatory in modern end-user equipment for mobile communications. This leads to an increasing demand for SAW and BAW components due to their compatibility with higher frequencies. In the year 2020, shipments of RF filters will exceed 68 billion (Figure 1), of which about 40 billion will be high-performance filters, such as film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs), high quality factor (Q) BAW components, temperature-compensated (TC) SAW components, and thin-film SAW components [1]-[3].