Akoustis Technologies has received its first purchase order from a first-tier smartphone manufacturer, which the company says is one of the top five global manufacturers. The order calls for the development of two high frequency BAW filters, covering high band LTE and 5 GHz Wi-Fi. Akoustis expects to deliver prototypes before the end of the year.

The smartphone customer chose Akoustis because of its demonstrated capability to deliver miniature RF filters up to 6 GHz, according to a press release announcing the award.

Jeff Shealy, CEO of Akoustis, said, “As we continue to improve the capability and performance of our premium high frequency BAW RF filters, we are pleased to secure our first order for prototypes from one of the premier smartphone OEMs. Once our customers qualify our single-crystal RF filter technology, we expect to ramp production to supply RF filter solutions for high volume consumer mobile and Wi-Fi applications.”

This is the fifth customer engagement Akoustis has announced since August 2017. The others  addressed the following applications:

• 2.6 GHz 4G/LTE mobile band,
• Radar application above 3.5 GHz,
• 5.2 GHz 802.11ac tri-band routers, and
• Diplexer module operating below 1.5 GHz.

All filters are being fabricated in the company’s new 150-mm wafer manufacturing facility, acquired from STC-MEMS in June of 2017.

Akoustis is developing BAW filters using high purity, single-crystal piezoelectric materials. Current generation BAW filters use polycrystalline materials. According to Akoustis, the properties of single-crystal materials improve electro-mechanical coupling, which translates to wide filter bandwidth and better skirt performance for coexistence applications. The single-crystal materials also have high thermal conductivity along the path of heat flow, which increases the power handling capability of the filter.