PFI-TT: Acousto-Electric Semiconductor Amplifiers to Expand Wireless Connectivity to a Larger Population of End-Users

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is in empowering a more affordable expansion of wireless connectivity for a larger population of end-users. This project investigates the interaction of acoustic phonons and charge carriers in a hybrid piezoelectric-semiconductor slab and could inspire a variety of discoveries and innovations in related disciplines.

The project is expected to provide an invaluable entrepreneurial training opportunity for a new generation of early-career engineers including, but not limited to, the students supported by this project. The resources available through this project will also directly impact the team's ongoing involvement in undergraduate/minority mentoring programs by creating opportunities to include student communities in a technology commercialization process from the early stages of concept development and market evaluation.

The proposed project aims to substantially enhance the performance of acousto-electric lithium niobate-semiconductor amplifiers and to evaluate the commercial potential of such devices in the wireless transceiver market. The targeted micro-scale non-reciprocal filter/amplifier may significantly assist Ratio Frequency (RF) designers and manufacturers by enabling full-duplex communication and relaxing the requirement on the front-end acoustic filters.

Such non-reciprocal RF components have substantial merits over alternative devices, including: ease of scalability to higher frequencies compared to the competing surface acoustic wave-based devices; feasibility of fabricating dispersed-frequency devices on a single chip in contrast to bulk thickness-mode devices; feasibility of continuous-wave operation due to the excellent thermal conductivity and elastic linearity of the semiconducting substrate (e.g. silicon); and fabrication of small form factors on a silicon substrate which makes the device a candidate for integration with other RF components that are currently included in the current RF front-end modules.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.