High-Frequency Magnetoelectric Antenna by Acoustic Excitation for 5G Communication

There is less “clearance” for the antenna for full-screen mobile phones, which is a higher challenge to antenna miniaturization in radio frequency. Magnetoelectric (ME) antenna stands out as a promising solution to antenna miniaturization in the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication technology for its superior miniaturization capability compared with conventional electrical antennas. Although many structures of ME antennas have been proposed, their resonant frequency stays below 3 GHz, which cannot satisfy 5G communication. Here, we report a magnetoelectric antenna with 445 nm AlN coupled with FeGaB/SiO
₂
multilayers based on the solidly mounted resonator (SMR) structure with Bragg reflectors of SiO
₂
/W/SiO
₂
/W/SiO
₂
, which resonates at 4.97 GHz consistent with theoretical analysis of the reflection performance of the ME antenna. The far-field radiation performance with different FeGaB thicknesses and near-field polarization of the ME antenna were tested. The experimental data demonstrate that the SMR-based ME antenna with 270 nm thick FeGaB film displays the highest far-field performance with a gain of −25.1 dBi, quality factor of 1207, and radiation efficiency of 0.53% with a circular resonating disk of 300 µm in diameter. Such a compact and high-frequency ME antenna is potentially suitable for the 5G wireless communication systems.