Akoustis Technologies, Inc. announced that it has successfully completed Phase 1 of its contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to pursue new materials and device manufacturing methods that can scale its XBAW technology to 18 GHz, and was awarded a new multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for Phase 2 of the DARPA COmpact Front-end Filters at the ElEment-level (COFFEE) program. Traditional scaling of BAW resonators to X and Ku bands typically results in unacceptably low Q (quality) factors, degraded electromechanical coupling, and much lower power capability driven by leaked energy from much smaller resonators. An alternative approach to BAW frequency scaling is a simple overtone mode operation, but this severely degrades electromechanical coupling.

In DARPA?s COFFEE program, Akoustis developed a novel technology (?XP3F?) to overcome trade-offs inherent in traditional BAW frequency scaling approaches. Akoustis plans to introduce XP3F filters and resonators that fully exploit the entire electromechanical coupling capability of the underlying piezoelectric material.