BSAC Seminar: FBAR Technology: Past, Present, and Future

February 20, 2008

Dr. Rich Ruby

Avago
February 20, 2008 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 521 Cory Hall, Hogan Room
Host: John Huggins

This talk will be about thin film acoustic resonators. The resonator is manufactured on a 6 micron silicon substrate, and consists of a free-standing membrane 1 to 2 microns thick. This thin film is the acoustic stack. The stack has metal electrodes and a sputtered piezoelectric aluminum nitride film. Made in a CMOS fab in Fort Collins, we now ship over 1 million filters per day. This year, we will pass the one billion mark for shipped filters. Between 80 and 90% of all US CDMA phones (for service providers (Sprint, Verizon, PCMetro, and AT&T Cingular) now has an FBAR filter, FBAR duplexer or our new FBAR Quintplexer. I will discuss our understanding of the physics of the device (a moving target), how it works in a filter (and why it works so well in cell phone filtering applications). I will cover the geo-political aspects of a business that can go from zero units to a million units a day in just 6 years (and just as easily - go away), what the competition is doing, and why we are the only ones making FBAR in the world. And lastly, I will discuss some of the new areas FBAR technology can address. In a business, some call a "beauty contest - winner takes all" and others describe as "dancing between the legs of the elephant," I hope to give some flavor of the excitement and beauty that is FBAR. BIOGRAPHY Rich Ruby obtained his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley and has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics from the same school. He started his professional career at Hewlett-Packard Company in the Labs and was a Member of Technical Staff there from 1985 till 1999. Richard worked on a variety of projects at the Labs including X-Ray lithography, E-beam Lithography, Electronic Packaging Solutions and Superconducting devices. In 1993, the Labs went through a re-organization and Rich was given a rare opportunity to pick his own project. He chose an obscure technology to work on: FBAR. The one year project that was only to be a learning vehicle for other MEMS related projects has turned into a life career. Rich was made Fellow at Agilent in 2000 (the first official Fellow promoted in Agilent). He is currently Director of Technology at Avago Technologies and has a group dedicated to looking for orthogonal markets that will leverage our FBAR technology. Rich is married with 3 children, with the eldest at UCSC and the second eldest at UCB (the youngest is in high school). His avocation is violin, and was at one time a member of the "Freeway Philharmonic."

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