The rollout of 5G is still underway, so that leaves room for new ideas and products to speed up the rollout. Enhancing ceramic materials could play a pivotal role in 5G development, according to Michael Hill, technical director of Skyworks Solutions, a California-based advanced-semiconductor company.
EurkeAlert! reported that Skyworks published a paper entitled Applied Physics Letters, which points out that “ceramic materials have long been used in wireless communications network technologies for both mobile devices and base stations.” Hill and his team have developed a ceramic to enhance the circulator device, which keeps the signal flowing and enables a receiver and transmitter to share the same antenna.
Circulators are typically composed of yttrium iron garnet, but Hill’s team has partially replaced the yttrium with bismuth to increase the energy density and accommodate the higher frequencies necessary for 5G. But according to Hill, this idea is just the start of innovation. “Millimeter-wave technology is likely to be the wild west for some time, as one technology may dominate only to be quickly supplanted by a different technology,” he said.
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