VIDA Products Developed Miniaturized YIG Oscillators Enabled by Differential YIG Resonators

A revolutionary Differential YTO concept employing RF coupling oscillation feedback conditions directly by means of a YIG resonator thus minimizing electron currents and providing equivalent inductances, capacitances, and Q that can’t be realized by any other means. In addition YTO is designed compatible with semiconductor foundry processing to meet todays’ production volume and cost targets. This presentation will provide theoretical, photographic, and experimental data to substantiate and compare conventional YIG designs with the existing differential oscillator using a MMIC and co-mounted sphere. Also, the ongoing work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to produce NanoYIG resonator films for much greater future miniaturization by application directly to the semiconductor die will be explored. The design in this presentation exploits well known YIG technology with the above major advancement currently realized by mounting a small sphere directly on very short transmission lines. These right angle lines are deposited on a custom HBT MMIC forming a cross to minimizing parasitic coupling of excitation line to feedback line in order to prevent unwanted oscillations. The YIG sphere is attached to the chip by a UVL cured epoxy directly over the coupling structure center. Installing in a specially designed permanent magnet package completes a sub-miniature surface mount Oscillator that is only 4mm diameter and 3 mm thick. Phase Noise data indicates that -150 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset is practical using a HBT in K band. Oscillations are made possible by the high gain of dual amplifiers, operating in a differential mode, lightly coupling through the YIG as a resonator, transformer, and phase shifter, thus forming an oscillating unit much like the “balance wheel” of a mechanical watch. Power is coupled, balanced, from both sides of the excitation and amplified by low phase noise, high gain amplifiers in a differential manner. The theoretical basis with supporting data will be presented showing a production ready state of the art Microwave oscillator that only needs power with the external magnetic bias quiescent field supplied by the permanent magnet package along with an optional small internal coil for frequency modulation. The presentation will also discuss designs of SiGe IC’s using the prior described differential oscillator and spheres along with other differential modules to multiply, mix, and divide the YIG signals extending frequency range and eliminating the bulky magnetic tuning. Finally, significant progress has been accomplished in producing a nano layer film of YIG on Silica coated Si for the first step in foundry manufacturing of YIG based components. Data will be presented to demonstrate the Nano-YIg films with thickness less than 100nm are functioning as a collection of spheres with sphere to sphere coupling. Data will be compared to single sphere resonators that have diameters from 0.127 to 0.257 mm.