SBIR-STTR Award

The Navy needs innovative T/R modules to achieve performance enhancement, cost reduction, decreased size and MMIC integration. New techniques compatible with RF MMIC fabrication in Gallium Nitride (GaN) on silicon carbide (SiC) to form a purely passive circulator for S-Band operation and radar applications with a nominal bandwidth of 1.5 GHz are required. The process must be compatible with wafer-level semiconductor device fabrication and be consistent with automated integrated circuit fabrication and assembly. Metamagnetics, in partnership with a MMIC foundry will perform the research needed to develop small, passive, self-biased, S-band circulators based on ferrite material and advanced circulator design to reduce the size of the circulator and enable integration at the MMIC level. Reducing the size of the circulators not only enhances performance through the reduction of parasitics, but offers the potential to increase the density of arrays in future radar systems. Air and Missile Defense Radar is the primary transition platform for this technology and we will develop a roadmap to the transition of our MMIC-compatible circulator into foundry processes used to build AMDR T/R modules

Benefit:
Metamagnetics proprietary technology is well suited to address present and future needs of various radar suites including the well known Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), now known as AN/SPY-6. AMDR is a future shipboard electronics system and will be part of a ballistic missile defense suite for several different kinds of Navy warships. The missile guidance radar system will contain an S-band radar, an X-band radar, and a Radar Suite Controller (RSC). One of the main targets for the AMDR is the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer, a Navy mainstay, there are currently 62 ships fielded by the Navy with another 14 scheduled for production. In fact, with the cancelation of the Zumwalt class, there is an expectation for this number to increase to 16 to help meet the Navys demand for a 355 ship fleet .

Keywords:
Ferrite, Ferrite, S-band, Integration, circulator, RF, Radar, T/R modules, MMIC

In this DARPA SBIR Phase II program, Metamagnetic Inc., in collaboration with Northrop Grumman, proposes to leverage multiple recent breakthroughs in magnetostatic wave (MSW) devices (e.g., auto-tune filters), self-biased hexaferrites, and monolithically integrated circulators to achieve a compact thin-film based MSW resonator utilizing hexaferrites for operation up to 110 GHz. This proposed effort will address the challenges associated with the performance of resonators working in the W-Band by growing hexaferrites with high anisotropy and high Q that would allow to design high performing resonators. Current state of the art hexaferrite resonators typically work up to 50 GHz and rely only on the ferrimagnetic resonance (FMR). In this effort hexaferrites will be doped with a small amount of aluminum that will push the frequency up yet not degrade the Q. These hexaferrite will be grown on lattice matched substrates utilizing liquid phase epitaxy (LPE). Integration onto a MMIC substrate will be carried out by Northrop Grumman in order to allow to measure the resonance at such high frequencies. Design efforts will be carried out to achieve high coupling to the MSW band at 110 GHz. The overall goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of exciting MSW in hexaferrites at W-Band which would provide a path for emerging W-Band components such as oscillators, filters, and mixers used in commercial and defense communication systems.