Akoustis Announces Major Milestone by Freezing Its First Generation Single Crystal BAW Manufacturing Process
March 06 2018 - 7:00AM
Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKTS) (“Akoustis” or
the “Company”), a manufacturer of patented single-crystal BulkONE®
bulk acoustic wave (BAW) high-band RF filters for mobile and other
wireless applications, announced today that the Company
has frozen its first generation, single crystal BAW wafer
manufacturing process and has begun technology qualification to
manufacture RF filters targeting licensed and unlicensed spectrum
up to 7GHz for mobile phones, WiFi wireless routers, military radar
and other devices.
The Company’s first generation single crystal
BAW wafer process, called XB1, establishes the industry’s first
single crystal BAW technology for the expanding RF filter
requirements for 4G/LTE, emerging 5G and WiFi applications.
Akoustis’ XB1 process features:
-
-
- Patented single crystal piezoelectric materials
- Large diameter silicon-based wafer platform
- Novel MEMS wafer manufacturing
- High precision acoustic wave device engineering
- High frequency RF performance demonstrated above 5GHz
- High linearity and wide bandwidth performance
- Compatible with conventional and flip-chip packaging
Jeff Shealy, Founder and CEO of Akoustis
Technologies said, “With today’s announcement, we have cleared
significant hurdles toward commercialization of our patented single
crystal BAW technology.” Shealy continued, “We are now positioned
to concentrate on the delivery of high performance RF filters for
current customer engagements to support WiFi, mobile and radar
applications.”
Akoustis is increasingly focused on developing
its RF filter product portfolio based upon the XB1 process. Since
XB1 supports a wide range of spectrum covering 4G/LTE, 5G, 5GHz
WiFi and C-V2X applications, the manufacturing process can be used
to develop RF filters for multiple end market segments. The Company
is focused on two initial packaged product solutions including a
3.8GHz radar single-band RF filter (AKF-1938) and a 5.2GHz WiFi
router RF filter (AKF-1252). The Company targets its first design
win by the end of June 2018, with shipments to commence in the
second half of the calendar year.
The process freeze is the foundational
qualification used to manufacture Akoustis’ BulkONE® RF filters.
Each new RF filter product will be separately qualified to
specifications defined by end market requirements.
Mary Winters, VP of Akoustis NY Wafer Fab, said,
“Since Akoustis acquired its fab in June 2017, we have transitioned
the silicon MEMS operation to deliver a frozen manufacturing
process for cutting-edge, single crystal BAW RF filters.” Winters
added, “Completing this transformation in just nine months was the
result of an enormous effort by our entire R&D and operations
teams.”
According to a 2017 Mobile Experts report, the
BAW RF filter market was approximately $2.6 billion in 2017 and is
expected to grow to $4.8 billion by 2021.
Akoustis is pioneering next-generation
materials science to address the market need for improved RF
filters - targeting higher bandwidth, operating frequencies and
output power compared to incumbent polycrystalline BAW
technology deployed today. Superior performance is driven by
the significant advances of high-purity,
single-crystal piezoelectric materials and the
resonator-filter process technology. The advanced
material properties drive electro-mechanical coupling, which
translates to wide filter bandwidth. High-band RF filters are
achieved by leveraging the Company’s superior sound velocity in
single-crystal piezoelectric materials. These single-crystal
piezoelectric materials offer high-thermal conductivity along the
path of heat flow, enabling high-power handling capability of the
RF filter. The Company has announced four customer engagements
for its premium high band BAW RF filters in
frequencies ranging from 1.5 GHz to 5.2 GHz and remains
focused on time to revenue.
About Akoustis Technologies,
Inc.
Akoustis® (http://www.akoustis.com) is a
high-tech RF filter solutions company that designs and manufactures
its unique, patented BulkONE® technology to produce
single-crystal bulk acoustic wave (BAW) RF filters for mobile
and other wireless markets, which facilitate signal
acquisition and accelerate band performance between the antenna and
digital back end. Its BulkONE® technology will service
the fast growing multi-billion-dollar market of device OEMs,
network providers, and consumers to diminish front end phone
heat, battery drain and signal loss -- all considered to be
directly related to current RF polycrystalline filter technologies'
limitations. The Company owns and operates a 120,000 sq.
ft. ISO-9001 certified commercial wafer-manufacturing facility
located in Canandaigua, NY, which includes a class 100 / class 1000
cleanroom facility - tooled for 150-mm diameter wafers -
for the design, development, fabrication and packaging of RF
filters, MEMS and semiconductor devices. Akoustis is
headquartered in the Piedmont technology
corridor near Charlotte North Carolina.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release that are not
descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking
statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of
the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These
forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to,
statements about our plans, objectives, representations and
contentions and are not historical facts and typically are
identified by use of terms such as "may," "will," "should,"
"could," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate,"
"predict," "potential," "continue" and similar words, although some
forward-looking statements are expressed differently. These
forward-looking statements are based on management’s current
expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and
uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those currently anticipated include, without
limitation, risks relating to the results of our research and
development activities, including uncertainties relating to
semiconductor process manufacturing; the early stage of
our BulkONE® technology and products presently under
development; our ability to protect our intellectual property
rights that are valuable to our business, including patent and
other intellectual property rights; our ability to successfully
market and sell products based on our technologies; the
ability to achieve qualification of our products for
commercial manufacturing in a timely manner and the size and growth
of the potential markets for any products so qualified; the rate
and degree of market acceptance of any of our products; and
our ability to raise funding to support operations and the
continued development and qualification of our products and the
technologies underlying them. These and other risks and
uncertainties, which are described in more detail in the Company’s
most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and in other reports and
statements filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. In light of these risks, uncertainties and
assumptions, the forward-looking statements regarding future events
and circumstances discussed in this press release may not occur,
and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those
anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. You
should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of
future events. The forward-looking statements included in
this presentation speak only as of the date hereof, and we
undertake no obligation to update publicly or privately any
forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this
presentation to conform these statements to actual results or to
changes in our expectations.
Contact:
COMPANY:
Tom Sepenzis
Akoustis Technologies
Director of Investor Relations
704-890-2925
tsepenzis@akoustis.com
The Del Mar Consulting Group, Inc.
Robert B. Prag, President
858-794-9500
bprag@delmarconsulting.com
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