5G and the wider bands, lower latency, greater connectivity and higher frequencies are setting new performance standards for RF filters and other RF devices (IPDs, switches, amplifiers, antenna tuners, etc.). There is also added pressure on new product innovations to overcome the mobile industry’s interference challenges and more stringent parameter requirements. The choice of substrate has a significant effect on the performance and Total Cost of Ownership of RF filters and other RF devices, which is why the demand for tailored, process-optimized substrates has surged. In this talk I would address the challenges that RF manufacturers are encountering, and the latest silicon wafer solutions developed to tackle these challenges. Okmetic is the world’s leading supplier of advanced silicon wafers for the RF/power and MEMS/sensor market and the seventh largest silicon wafer supplier in the world. Okmetic has an entire line of high resistivity RFSi® wafers targeted that are optimized for all types of acoustic wave filters, IPD devices, power amplifiers, integrated RFIC power amplifiers, as well as silicon interposers. In this talk, I would be going through three main topics: 1. Most recent addition in the RFSi® wafer line: Engineered Ultra High Resistivity wafers combining over 10 kOhm-cm resistivity with highly efficient tarp-rich layer enabling close to zero substrate-induced losses needed in filter designs, like TF-SAW or BAW, or IPD devices.
2. High resistivity silicon wafers with suspended low-loss structures meeting the mm wave device needs. Combination of cost-effective Cavity SOI structures with Customer specific design and high resistivity silicon materials enables improved device functionality in the RF environment and more chips per wafers to be produced.
3. Power management in RF world using thick <111> oriented high resistivity wafers as a platform for GaN-on-Si applications. These wafers are designed to endure the extreme stresses of the RF GaN epi process and to drive the insertion losses lower, which makes them optimal platforms for Power management in the dense 5G base station network. This unique substrate option is manufactured with the Magnetic Czochralski crystal growth method and can’t be manufactured with the other commonly used crystal growth method Float Zone.