Design and Fabrication of a Film Bulk Acoustic Wave Filter for 3.0 GHz–3.2 GHz S-Band

Abstract

Film bulk acoustic-wave resonators (FBARs) are widely utilized in the field of radio frequency (RF) filters due to their excellent performance, such as high operation frequency and high quality. In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of an FBAR filter for the 3.0 GHz–3.2 GHz S-band. Using a scandium-doped aluminum nitride (Sc0.2Al0.8N) film, the filter is designed through a combined acoustic–electromagnetic simulation method, and the FBAR and filter are fabricated using an eight-step lithographic process. The measured FBAR presents an effective electromechanical coupling coefficient (keff2) value up to 13.3%, and the measured filter demonstrates a −3 dB bandwidth of 115 MHz (from 3.013 GHz to 3.128 GHz), a low insertion loss of −2.4 dB, and good out-of-band rejection of −30 dB. The measured 1 dB compression point of the fabricated filter is 30.5 dBm, and the first series resonator burns out first as the input power increases. This work paves the way for research on high-power RF filters in mobile communication.