Flexible Film Bulk Acoustic Wave Filters toward Radiofrequency Wireless Communication

This paper presents a flexible radiofrequency filter with a central frequency of 2.4 GHz based on film bulk acoustic wave resonators (FBARs). The flexible filter consists of five air-gap type FBARs, each comprised of an aluminum nitride piezoelectric thin film sandwiched between two thin-film electrodes. By transfer printing the inorganic film structure from a silicon wafer to an ultrathin polyimide substrate, high electrical performance and mechanical flexibility are achieved. The filter has a peak insertion loss of -1.14 dB, a 3 dB bandwidth of 107 MHz, and a temperature coefficient of frequency of -27 ppm degrees C-1. The passband and roll-off characteristics of the flexible filter are comparable with silicon-based commercial products. No electrical performance degradation and mechanical failure occur under bending tests with a bending radius of 2.5 mm or after 100 bending cycles. The flexible FBAR filters are believed to be promising candidates for future flexible wireless communication systems.