Agere Systems Inc.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Agere Systems Guardian Corp.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Ronald Eugene Miller

Bradley Paul Barber

Harold Alexis Huggins

Linus Albert Fetter

Yiu-Huen Wong

Donald Winslow Murphy

Antony A Stark

Forming a thin film acoustic device by patterning a layer of non-conducting material on a first side of a substrate to expose a portion of the first substrate side; depositing layers of conducting material on the layer of non-conducting material and the exposed portion of the first substrate side; depositing a layer of piezoelectric material on the layers of conducting material; depositing and patterning additional layers of material on the layer of piezoelectric material to form a first device electrode; depositing and patterning a masking layer on a second side of the substrate to expose a portion of the second substrate side; etching away the exposed substrate portion to expose the patterned layer of non-conducting material and a portion of the layers of conducting material; and etching away the exposed portion of the layers of conducting material to form a second device electrode.

Methods of fabricating a membrane with improved mechanical integrity

Methods for fabricating robust films across a patterned underlying layer's edges or steps are disclosed. The novel methods diminish the negative effects of electrode steps or edges on the integrity of a membrane. Thus, the methods are particularly applicable to membrane release technology. The height of the step or edge is eliminated or reduced to increase the mechanical integrity of the film.

A reflector stack or acoustic mirror arrangement for an acoustic device is described which may attain the highest possible impedance mismatch between alternating higher and lower impedance reflecting layers of the stack, so as to maximize bandwidth. The arrangement may also reduce manufacturing costs by requiring fewer layers for the device, as compared to conventional acoustic mirrors. The thinner reflecting stack is accordingly fabricated in reduced time to lower cost, by incorporating materials providing a larger acoustic impedance mismatch than those currently obtainable. The bandwidth of the resulting acoustic resonator device may be widened, particularly when a low density material such as aerogel, CVD SiO and/or sputter deposited SiO is applied as topmost layer in the reflector stack/acoustic mirror arrangement of the device.

Acoustic mirror materials for acoustic devices

A quality-assurance method is described that is useful in the fabrication of piezoelectric films of electronic devices, particularly resonators for use in RF filters. For example, the method comprises determining the surface roughness of an insulating layer on which the piezoelectric film is to be deposited and achieving a surface roughness for the insulating layer that is sufficiently low to achieve the high-quality piezoelectric film. According to one aspect of the invention, the low surface roughness for the insulating layer is achieved with use of a rotating magnet magnetron system for improving the uniformity of the deposited layer. According to other aspects of the invention, the high-quality piezoelectric film is assured by optimizing deposition parameters including determination of a &ldquo;cross-over point&rdquo; for reactive gas flow and/or monitoring and correcting for the surface roughness of the insulating layer pre-fabrication of the piezoelectric film.

Method for producing piezoelectric films with rotating magnetron sputtering system

A single substrate with a stripline circuit on one of its surfaces for use in a down converting mixer has a thin metallic film deposited utilizing photolithographic techniques onto two free ends: one end with the junction section of the stripline circuit for establishing a ground path with the metal block upon which the substrate rests and the other end with the filter section of the stripline circuit for establishing the intermediate frequency signal path with the inner conductor of a coaxial cable.

Growing community of inventors

Riegelsville, PA, United States of America

Ronald Eugene Miller