CMOS Compatible Deposition of Multi-Ferroic Films for Tunable Microwave Applications

Built upon the progress in Phase I period, Winchester Technologies, LLC proposes to investigate practical magnetoelectric antennas during the Phase II period for different applications. State of the art antennas suffer from three major open challenges: (1) large antenna size, (2) antenna impedance mismatch; (3) ground plane effect. This is because state of the art antennas are based on oscillating electric currents in electrical conductor(s), which leads to large antenna sizes more than 1/10 of the electromagnetic (EM) wavelength. The proposed acoustically actuated ME antennas solves all three open challenges at the same time. The PI’s are the first and only team that has demonstrated ultra-compact acoustically actuated RF magnetoelectric antennas with their size comparable to the acoustic wavelength, instead of their electromagnetic wavelength. Since acoustic wavelength is ~10-5 of electromagnetic wavelength, these magnetoelectric antennas are much more compact than state of the art compact antennas with excellent antenna impedance matching. In addition, these magnetoelectric antennas use acoustically driven magnetic currents, not electric currents, for radiation, thus are conformal antennas immune from ground plane effect. The end goal of Phase II will be to deliver practical ME antennas for both military and civilian applications.