From November 6 to 8, ELEXCON 2022 Shenzhen International Electronics Exhibition and Embedded System Exhibition was held in Shenzhen. Hangzhou Zuolan Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zuolan Microelectronics”), a leading supplier of RF front-end devices in China, appeared with the latest series of products, focusing on the characteristics of “miniaturization”, “integration” and “modularization”, and comprehensively demonstrated the advanced technology and latest achievements of its high-performance RF filters.
Aiming at the technical difficulties in the industry and deeply cultivating the medium and high-end innovation of RF
Data shows that in 2021, 351 million smartphones will be shipped in China, up 13.9% year on year. Among them, 266 million 5G smartphones were shipped, up 53.5% year on year. The analysis report on mobile phone market shipments in the third quarter of 2022 recently released by IDC, a market research organization, shows that China’s smartphone market shipments in the third quarter of 2022 fell by 11.9% year on year. However, thanks to the early release of Apple’s iPhone 14 series and the return of Huawei’s Mate 50 series of new products this year, the domestic smartphone market achieved a month on month growth of 6.0% in the third quarter, which shows that the market environment has gradually warmed up.
Driven by 5G and domestic substitution, as well as the client’s demand for new materials, high performance, ultra-thin and small size, the domestic RF front-end technology is also rapidly changing and developing. More and more local manufacturers are striving to accumulate technology and process, trying to break the market pattern of RF devices dominated by foreign manufacturers.
Zuolan Microelectronics has positioned the development of medium and high-end RF, and has a complete acoustic design, electromagnetic packaging design tool chain and forward R&D and design capabilities. It has built a modular design platform and design database for independent research and development, enabling the R&D team to rapidly iterate devices and develop new products forward, and has launched a number of high reliability, high integration, ultra-thin and small size medium and high-end RF devices and modules.
In the iterative process from 4G to 5G, the complexity of RF devices gradually increases. In the design of RF filter, the difficulty lies in how to reduce the size of the device, and on the basis of making the device thin and small, meet the requirements of other performance points or even better, such as power consumption, temperature drift, insertion loss, etc. As shown in Atlas 2 above, the ultrathin filter of ZuoLan Microelectronics has obvious advantages in space size compared with conventional filters. Through test and comparison, they are consistent in performance and will become the preferred target in the market.
Zuolan Microelectronics, through repeated iteration and continuous verification over the years, has tackled technical problems around market demand and hot spots, launched RF filters, duplexers/multiplexers and RF front-end modules that can adapt to high-frequency communication, have good thermal stability, be miniaturized and integrated, and comprehensively improved the core capabilities of domestic RF manufacturers.
First of all, Zuolan Microelectronics has carried out a large number of technology reserves and patent layout, and has owned more than 100 pieces of intellectual property rights, building a “moat” of patents. The company integrates patent information utilization and layout protection into R&D projects and new technology development, fully absorbs international cutting-edge technologies, dynamically helps promote independent product innovation, and combines risk management system to form an avoidance design with independent intellectual property rights, and forms independent innovation achievements and intellectual property layout. After years of accumulation, the company has made many breakthroughs in terms of technology routes such as SAW/TCSAW/PESAW/PEBAW, in terms of process, materials, etc., especially in terms of performance improvement, packaging technology, and volume reduction, and consolidated patent barriers. The size of SAW devices is reduced by optimizing the design of SAW devices. Without increasing the process, the lateral mode leakage is suppressed by optimizing the interdigital parameters to stabilize the Q value technology.
In addition, in terms of industrial chain integration, Zuolan Microelectronics has bound its production capacity with well-known wafer foundry in the industry, and jointly built a sealed test production line with the head sealed test factory to ensure stable supply of products and form a benign production and market relationship; Zuolan Microelectronics has also established close cooperation and procurement channels with mainstream wafer material manufacturers at home and abroad to link the optimization and iteration of design and process. At present, Zuolan Microelectronics’s own rear seal test production line is constantly completing the batch delivery task, and the yield of filters and duplexers continues to improve.
The left hand makes breakthroughs in technology and process, and the right hand improves the industrial chain integration capability. Zuolan Microelectronics continues to break through technical difficulties in the market and improve product performance. At present, ZuoLan Microelectronics has become one of the few domestic manufacturers that can develop and sell a full range of RF filters (SAW/TC-SAW, PESAW, PEBAW, RF front-end modules). Its products include 1.6 mm * 1.2 mm small size, ultra-thin diplexers such as B1/2/3/5/7/8/20/66, and innovative design filters applied to modules, which have rapidly promoted the miniaturization and integration of RF front-end and attracted the attention of the industry in the RF field.
Several ultra-thin and small new products appeared to meet the requirements of 5G miniaturization and modularization
In the 5G era, the type and usage of mobile phone RF devices have been greatly increased compared with 4G. Limited by the space of mobile phones, these RF devices need to achieve large bandwidth, high out of band suppression and low insertion loss while reducing the package size. At this ELEXCON exhibition, Zuolan Microelectronics brought many new products, showing the progress of filters, duplexers and diversity modules with different technical routes. The series of products are characterized by small size, high integration and strong reliability, which can fully meet the miniaturization and modularization requirements brought by 5G communication.
In terms of duplexer research and development, the 1612 size B5 band duplexer of ZuoLan Microelectronics has entered the mass production preparation stage in the middle of this year. The input power has reached 31dBm, the typical value of TX insertion loss is 1.5dB, and the typical value of RX insertion loss is 1.9dB. The isolation performance is equivalent to that of foreign brand manufacturers, and the out of band suppression system also meets the needs of the terminal market. The B5, B12 and B20 small size duplex products developed by Zuolan Microelectronics all have excellent performance such as low insertion loss and high power. The out of band suppression results of B12 small size products are better than those of a W international manufacturer.
ZuoLan Microelectronics has more high performance filters such as PESAW and PEBAW, which can improve performance through technical differentiation, size reduction and performance improvement. A complete R&D and supply chain has been built for the PESAW high-performance filter of ZuoLan Microelectronics 3.0 product. The PESAW technology duplexer can meet the application scenarios with high performance requirements, such as high Q value (>2000), low insertion loss (<1.5dB), high isolation (>58dB), and high power (power capacity is 2dBm higher than normal). Among them, B25 and B28F PESAW duplexers developed by ZuoLan have made great progress, with high Q value, low loss, small temperature drift, high power resistance and other characteristics.
In addition, ZuoLan Microelectronics launched its independently developed 5G n78 PEBAW filter in May this year, which is applicable to both 5G small base stations and high-quality 5G mobile intelligent terminals. It has the characteristics of small size, low insertion loss, good out of band suppression, high power, etc. Its passband frequency is 3400-3600MHz, the maximum input power reaches 33dBm, and it supports the temperature range from – 40 ℃ to+95 ℃. Among them, the 1.4mm x 1.1mm package size is applicable to small base stations, while the smaller 1.1mm x 0.9mm package size can be applied to 5G mobile intelligent terminals.
Last year, ZuoLan Microelectronics has entered the modular “camp” and launched two diversity antenna RF link DiFEM module products integrating RF switches and filters – SPDM001 and SPDM003: the former diversity receiving module is packaged with LGA, and the package size is 3.2mm * 3.0mm; The latter diversity receiving module also adopts LGA package, with package size of 3.7mm * 3.2mm. Both products have the characteristics of high integration, strong reliability and support for CA carrier aggregation. Zuolan Microelectronics said that R&D cooperation around more high-end module products such as LFEM and PAMiD has been put on the agenda, bringing more products needed by the market. In the next few years, it is still difficult for domestic RF manufacturers to make breakthroughs in the medium and high frequency PAMiD modules. The company has begun to start with the filters and duplexers required by the PAMiD modules and gradually form more breakthroughs.
In the trend of continuous miniaturization of mobile terminal equipment design, when the market presents an urgent demand for small size, highly integrated and high-performance products, ZuoLan Microelectronics faces the market demand, strengthens the promotion of product development and construction, and constantly targets foreign first-class RF device manufacturers to achieve new breakthroughs in China’s RF device field. Looking at the huge domestic communication business market, with the technological progress of domestic RF devices, 5G technology development is expected to hold the whole industry chain in the hands of Chinese people!