Recent developments of film bulk acoustic resonators

Abstract

Film bulk acoustic wave resonator (FBAR) experienced skyrocketing development in the past 15 years, owing to the explosive development of mobile communication. It stands out in acoustic filters mainly because of high quality factor, which enables low insertion loss and sharp roll off. Except for the massive application in wireless communication, FBARs are also promising sensors because of the high sensitivity and readily integration ability to miniaturize circuits. On the ground of summarizing FBAR’s application in wireless communication as filters and in sensors including electronic nose, bio field, and pressure sensing, this paper review the main challenges of each application faced. The number of filters installed in the mobile phone has being grown explosively, which leads to overcrowded bands and put harsh requirements on component size and power consumption control for each unit. Data flow and rate are becoming increasingly demanding as well. This paper discusses three promising technical strategies addressing these issues. Among which coupled resonator filter is given intense attention because it is able to vigorously reduce the filter size by stacking two or more resonators together, and it is a great technique to increase data flow and rate. Temperature compensation methods are discussed considering their vital influence on frequency stability. Finally, materials improvement and novel materials exploration for band width modulation, tunable band acquisition, and quality factor improvement are discussed. The authors appeal attention of the academic society to bring AlN epitaxial thin film into the FBAR fabrication and have proposed a configuration to implement this idea.