Gallium nitride phononic integrated circuits for future RF front-ends

Abstract

Achieving monolithic integration of passive acoustic wave devices, in particular RF filters, with active devices such as RF amplifiers and switches, is the optimal solution to meet the challenging communication requirements of mobile devices, especially as we move towards the 6G era. This requires a significant ($\approx$100x) reduction in the size of the RF passives, from mm${}^2$ footprints in current devices to tens of $\mu m^2$ in future systems. Applying ideas from integrated photonics, we demonstrate that high frequency (>3 GHz) sound can be efficiently guided in $\mu$m-scale gallium nitride(GaN) waveguides by exploiting the strong velocity contrast available in the GaN on silicon carbide (SiC) platform. Given the established use of GaN devices in RF amplifiers, our work opens up the possibility of building monolithically integrated RF front-ends in GaN-on-SiC.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures. Comments welcome !!!

References in corpus (6)

• Controlling phonons and photons at the wavelength-scale: silicon photonics meets silicon phononics
• Gigahertz phononic integrated circuits on thin-film lithium niobate on sapphire
• Surface acoustic wave unidirectional transducers for quantum applications
• Piezoelectric transduction of a wavelength-scale mechanical waveguide
• High frequency guided mode resonances in mass-loaded, thin film gallium nitride surface acoustic wave devices
• Toward Microphononic Circuits on Chip: An Evaluation of Components based on High-Contrast Evanescent Confinement of Acoustic Waves

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Optomechanical ring resonator for efficient microwave-optical frequency conversion
• Low-loss GHz frequency phononic integrated circuits in Gallium Nitride for compact radio-frequency acoustic wave devices
• Temporal dynamics of GHz acoustic waves in chipscale phononic integrated circuits
• Boundary-induced helical bulk acoustic transport in LiNbO3 thin films