Low-noise acoustoelectric microwave amplifiers with net gain in continuous operation

Over sixty years ago, it was hypothesized that specially designed acoustic systems that leveraged the acoustoelectric effect between phonons and charge carriers could revolutionize radio frequency electronic systems by allowing nonlinear and nonreciprocal functionalities such as gain and isolation to be achieved in the acoustic domain. Despite six decades of work, no acoustoelectric amplifier has been produced that can achieve a large net (terminal) gain at microwave frequencies with low power consumption and noise figure. Here we demonstrate a novel three-layer acoustoelectric heterostructure that enables the first-ever continuously operating acoustoelectric amplifier with terminal gain at gigahertz frequencies. We achieve a terminal gain of 11.25 dB in a 500 micron long device, operating at 1 GHz with a DC power dissipation of 19.6 mW. We also realize broadband gain from 0.25-3.4 GHz and nonreciprocal transmission exceeding 44 dB at 1 GHz. Our acoustic noise figure is 2.8 dB, which is the lowest ever demonstrated noise figure for an acoustoelectric amplifier. We discuss generally how to optimize these acoustoelectric heterostructures and show that it should be immediately achievable to produce devices with even larger gain in shorter lengths while simultaneously having lower power consumption and noise figure.