Atomera Incorporated announced the availability of an MST solution to dramatically enhance performance of RFSOI wafer substrates for leading-edge cellular communication products. The company will demonstrate the effectiveness of this solution on experimental 300mm RF-SOI wafers with an ultra-thin active layer utilizing a new formulation of Atomera's MST technology. For many years, it has been understood that thinner RF-SOI substrates would enable higher performance, but trade-offs between speed and power handling made implementation impractical until this solution was introduced by Atomera.

These wafers, paired with MST should enable higher-performance antenna switches, higher-fidelity low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), and other enhanced RF components for 5G Advanced and 6G applications. The company is working with multiple RF IC product manufacturers to evaluate and demonstrate the wide range of benefits of this MST-enabled technology solution. RF-SOI substrates have become the standard platform for many RF devices, particularly front-end modules (FEMs) and are used in 100% of 5G smartphones today.

RF-SOI substrates offer significantly better linearity and lower noise than conventional silicon substrates, and they are fully compatible with existing CMOS process flows. RF-SOI products and manufacturing processes are widely available from numerous IC suppliers and foundries.