French semiconductor materials designer and manufacturer Soitec has entered a business agreement with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. on the supply of piezoelectric-on-insulator (POI) engineered substrates for 4G and 5G radio frequency filters. Soitec's POI substrate brings strong value proposition to smartphones' 5G filters for mass market.

After multiple years of collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Soitec has concluded an agreement to bring POI wafers production to high volume manufacturing to be used for Qualcomm Technologies' RF filters going to smartphones RF front end modules.

POI is an innovative substrate manufactured to Soitec's proprietary Smart Cut technology in 150mm. At its foundation lies a high resistivity silicon substrate, complemented by a buried oxide layer and a very thin and uniform layer of a mono-crystal piezo material on top. Soitec's POI engineered substrates have been designed to build the latest generation of 4G/5G surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters. They offer performance with built-in temperature compensation.

"This business agreement is the outcome of a collaboration between Soitec and Qualcomm Technologies. We are very pleased that Soitec POI substrates are now an important part of Qualcomm Technologies' 5G offering for mobile devices," said Dr. Bernard Aspar, Senior Executive Vice President of Soitec's Global Business Units.

"With our game-changing thin-film technology and innovation in the Qualcomm ultraSAW RF filter products, we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in mobile technology", said Christian Block, Senior Vice President and General Manager, RFFE, Qualcomm Germany RFFE GmbH. "This agreement with Soitec is key to ensure the supply of high-performance POI substrates from Soitec, and to securely support the demand from our OEM customers for high-performance Qualcomm ultraSAW RF filter products."