In December 2019, the "2019 China Chip" selection event organized by Shenzhen "Chip Joint Committee" and focusing on China's domestic chip innovation and technology ended successfully at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.
After more than three months of fierce competition, the RF MEMS filter developed by SZHT Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., which broke the technology monopoly of foreign giants and realized the localization of RF filter technology. Market performance, won the "2019 Best Domestic Radio Frequency Chip Product Award"!
Higher quality factor, lower insertion loss and higher out-of-band rejection are all important indicators to measure filter performance. At present, the insertion loss of most Band40 filters (B40 filters for short) in China is maintained above 1.5dB, while SZHT's B40 filter filters can reach a lower 1.2dB, in the insertion loss that has approached the performance limit. A breakthrough was made again, and the performance was greatly improved compared to competitors of the same type. Even in the face of the American company Qorvo, which is one of the monopolistic filter markets, the insertion loss of SZHT's B40 filter has reached the same level as that of its similar products; for the suppression value of the WiFi frequency band, SZHT's B40 filter can reach 50dB, which is comparable to Qorvo. Similar products.
5G communication is the technological commanding heights that European and American giants and developed countries compete for, and the RF front-end is one of the cores of 5G communication. As the largest business segment in the entire RF front-end (power amplifier, RF filter, low noise amplifier and RF switch) market, RF filters can be divided into surface acoustic wave filters (SAW filters) and bulk acoustic wave filters. There are two types of filters (BAW filters), and BAW filters based on MEMS technology are more competitive in the 5G era because of the performance advantages of the mid- and high-frequency bands.
The research and development and production of radio frequency MEMS filters require a high degree of coordination between design and technology. At the same time, the production and manufacturing process is a non-standardized special process, which requires high precision and high difficulty coefficient. Due to the early development of foreign countries, a relatively complete patent layout has been formed around core technologies. At present, the BAW filter market is mainly occupied by two American companies, Avago and Qorvo; and SAW filters are basically monopolized by giants such as muRata and TDK. Chinese products Almost a blank, only a few companies and institutions have a very small number of low-end filter products shipped. It is a key technology that is subject to others that needs to be solved urgently throughout China.
In the absence of China’s domestic market and almost no R&D experience in this field in the industry, SZHT lasted 4 years. After repeated trials, trial production, and adjustment of the production process, SZHT achieved breakthroughs in product design, structural optimization and key processes. The research and development of RF MEMS filter chip has been completed to fill the gap of domestic RF filter. The performance of the early samples has been comparable to that of foreign giants, breaking the technological monopoly of foreign giants.
About SZHT Electronics Co., Ltd.
SZHT was established in 2012. Since its establishment, it has been committed to breaking the foreign technology monopoly and realizing the domestic research and development of RF filters and related RF chips and devices. The team has gone through the entire process of product development from laboratory development to mass production and sales. It has a number of core technologies for RF MEMS resonators and filters. It is the first company in China to fully master the mass production technology of RF MEMS filters (BAW) .
In 2019, SZHT launched four RF MEMS filter products to the market, including a full-band N41 filter adapted to 5G technology. All products have been officially shipped in the second half of 2019 and the market has responded well. In the 5G era of rapid technological change, the company's core team focuses on technological change and innovation. In 2020, the company plans to launch five more filter products, striving to become the strongest and largest supplier of RF chips and RF modules in China within three years.
The successful research and development of China's domestic filters has broken the technological monopoly of foreign giants, solved the pain points of Chinese filter chips being controlled by others and heavily dependent on imports, and contributed to the rise of "China Core".
The company has fully mastered a complete set of MEMS filter industrialization technology from design and modeling, manufacturing, packaging to testing.
In the 5G era, filters will account for more than 50% of the cost of RF front-ends, with a compound annual growth rate of 21%. By 2020, the total market for filters will reach $13 billion.
The core team of SZHT brings together top design talents in high-volume fields from famous universities such as Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai Jiaotong University and American universities. Most of the team members have R&D and management experience in well-known domestic and foreign companies such as Avago, Skyworks, and GlobalFoundries. He has been deeply involved in the fields of integrated circuits and MEMS for more than 10 years, with rich design experience and leading domestic technology.
After more than four years of process development and practice, the company has fully mastered the key core technologies of piezoelectric layer deposition, photolithography, etching, and cavity structure release, and has independent intellectual property rights. In terms of packaging, the company has jointly developed wafer-level bonding packaging technology with packaging manufacturers. After a long period of exploration, the packaging process has become mature and has the conditions for mass production.
In terms of technology, SZHT is a leading RF technology company in China. It has been developing MEMS filter chip products with independent intellectual property rights since 2015, and has successfully verified all related design and simulation processes. The whole process adopts MEMS three-dimensional processing technology, which is compatible with IC technology. After more than four years of development and practice, all key processes have been overcome, and the relationship between the key structure of the device and the main frequency, differential loss and other performance parameters of the device has been systematically mastered. All technical bottlenecks of MEMS filters have been completely overcome.
Based on our own process foundation and research and development capabilities, we are also developing large-scale applications of MEMS sensor devices and MEMS communication chips in 5G, Internet of Things, and other fields, and try to establish a complete production line, including filters, antennas, R&D of multiple single-product chips for power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers and RF switches, and began to develop RF modules that highly integrate all single-chip RF front-ends, and improve the strategic layout of the entire RF front-end products.
The progress of the chip industry comes from continuous struggle, and the advancement of chip innovation needs to carry forward the past. Now the Chinese chip industry has broken through the technological monopoly of foreign giants in various local areas. In the future, China's chip industry will continue to break through industry fields and industrial chain barriers.