A 2 GHz oscillator using a monolithically integrated AlN TFBAR

Abstract

A 2 GHz oscillator based on a solidly mounted AlN Thin-Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (TFBAR) is reported. The oscillator is realised as a silicon-on-silicon MultiChip Module (MCM) where all passive elements, including the TFBAR, are monolithically integrated on a HighResistivity Silicon (HRS) carrier. SiGe transistors are flipchip mounted on the MCM carrier.Measurements of the oscillators reveal a best phase-noise of −125 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset.

Mass sensitivity of multilayer thin film resonant BAW sensors

“…So far only publications of network analyzer based FBAR sensor measurements have been published in the literature [1][2][3] which show that the FBAR mass resolution is very similar if not better than for oscillator based QCM sensors, which in turn indicates that the FBAR could be a competitive and inexpensive alternative to the QCM. Low phase noise FBAR based integrated oscillator has recently been presented, which further strengthen the expectations of the FBAR sensors fabricated with low cost mass production processes [4].…”

“…Shear mode FBAR has successfully been utilized for biosensors applications [1,3,11]. Low phase noise FBAR based integrated oscillator has recently been presented, which further strengthen the expectations of the FBAR sensors fabricated with low cost mass production processes [4].…”

Active N-path Filters: Theory and Design

“…The basic configuration of a BAW (Bulk Acoustic Wave) resonator is a piezoelectric thin film surrounded by two metal electrodes [43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]. Fig.…”

“…2.13 [43]. FBAR resonators can offer Q-factors in the range of 1k [43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,52,53]. In [43], a duplexer based on FBAR resonators was fabricated working at 1900 MHz (the PCS band), which was 10 times smaller than its off-chip counterpart and it was better than a SAW duplexer in terms of power handling [46,47,48].…”

“…FBAR resonators are extensively used in oscillator design leading to very low power and low phase-noise LO generations [43,44,45,49,53,56,58,59]. In most cases, the FBAR resonators are wire bonded to the transistor chip.…”