Exploiting Acoustic Devices and Mechanical Domain to Achieve High-Performance RF Nonreciprocity

Acoustic waves have the unique advantage of featuring orders of magnitude smaller phase velocities and wavelengths than those of electromagnetic waves, thus holding great potential in miniaturizing RF components that exploit waveguiding structures. However, nonreciprocal RF components (e.g., gyrators and circulators) are challenging to attain directly in the acoustic domain as most acoustic materials do not have gyroscopic properties. This talk will explore several techniques that couple either time-varying approaches or novel gyroscopic material stacks with wideband acoustic transduction and low-loss acoustic propagation to produce nonreciprocity at chip-scale. Design trades for leveraging the acoustic domain will be specifically highlighted for several relevant applications beyond the simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR).