Thermal behavior of BAW filters at high RF power levels.

The temperature increase of bulk acoustic wave filters at high RF power levels has been investigated. Self-heating due to power dissipation in the filter leads to a nonuniform frequency shift of the insertion loss. At the right filter skirt, self-heating is amplified by the negative temperature coefficient of frequency. We demonstrate that at high RF power levels, this can cause thermal instabilities resulting in an abrupt step in the insertion loss. A novel frequency transformation is introduced to describe the nonuniform frequency shift of the insertion loss as well as the thermal instabilities. A condition for the occurrence of thermal instabilities is derived. It is argued that because of this nonuniform frequency shift at high power levels, accelerated lifetime tests can overestimate the lifetime, if the stress frequency is not compensated for self-heating. Here, the frequency transformation is used to determine the stress frequencies at high RF power levels from low-power S-parameter measurements.

Ferroelectric thin-film capacitors and piezoelectric switches for mobile communication applications.

Thin-film ferroelectric capacitors have been integrated with resistors and active functions such as ESD protection into small, miniaturized modules, which enable a board space saving of up to 80%. With the optimum materials and processes, integrated capacitors with capacitance densities of up to 100 nF/mm2 for stacked capacitors combined with breakdown voltages of 90 V have been achieved. The integration of these high-density capacitors with extremely high breakdown voltage is a major accomplishment in the world of passive components and has not yet been reported for any other passive integration technology. Furthermore, thin-film tunable capacitors based on barium strontium titanate with high tuning range and high quality factor at 1 GHz have been demonstrated. Finally, piezoelectric thin films for piezoelectric switches with high switching speed have been realized.

Single quantum dot nanowire LEDs.

We report reproducible fabrication of InP-InAsP nanowire light-emitting diodes in which electron-hole recombination is restricted to a quantum-dot-sized InAsP section. The nanowire geometry naturally self-aligns the quantum dot with the n-InP and p-InP ends of the wire, making these devices promising candidates for electrically driven quantum optics experiments. We have investigated the operation of these nanoLEDs with a consistent series of experiments at room temperature and at 10 K, demonstrating the potential of this system for single photon applications.