Spin-wave radiofrequency magnonic devices – SWIM

The SWIM project aims to develop and bring to TRL 3 two spin-wave based radio frequency (RF) devices: a delay line and a power limiter. The project is part of a longer-term strategy of the consortium to exploit recent advances in magnonics, to realize new RF analog functionalities (filter, phase shifter, etc.). Spin waves (or magnons) are the collective excitations that carry angular momentum in magnetic materials. They play a crucial role in many microwave applications because of their dispersion relation, which is tunable over a very wide range of frequencies (several octaves) and their small wavelength (< 10µm), which allows to design miniaturized functions.
From a strategic point of view, our approach aims at developing new analog components for telecommunications and radars. The work proposed by SWIM addresses mainly the axis 6 (6.1, 6.4, 6.6), the priority 2023 "Innovative components for the improvement and miniaturization of microwave and communication chains", but also the axis 5 (5.1, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5).
We respond to the real need for miniaturization of delay lines and the need for high power microwave limiters in the context of increasing vulnerability of systems to accidental or intentional jamming in the context of electronic warfare. This project also accompanies societal changes such as the Internet of Things. The electronic systems of the future will be multi-mode and multi-band stimulating a vertiginous growth of the number of RF components for mobile devices and the critical part of the transmission/reception chain are the front-end analog components. Our target are therefore technological needs on which the intrinsic properties of magnonics (wavelength, frequency tunability, selective response, nonlinear limiting effects, etc.) provide differentiating markers.
SWIM will capitalize on the consortium's outstanding results in materials development (UMPHY and Lab-STICC) and advanced magnonic component design (TRT), as well as on the expertise in RF circuit design of Lab-STICC.
We have recently started to develop (UMPHY) a multiphysics simulation model on HFSS in order to integrate spin wave physics on a standard RF design tool. The transfer and exploitation of these first results in linear regime will allow to exploit the expertise of the Lab-Sticc partner in RF devices and circuits design, and to lead to an optimization on the two use cases indicated previously. This approach will allow to bring magnonic RF components well beyond current performances in terms of insertion loss, bandwidth, operating frequency, etc. and to evaluate their potential with respect to existing technologies.
We will develop and benchmarm: ii) a Ku-band delay line (delay of a few tens of ns, bandwidth of 300MHz, losses below 6dB); iii) an S-band power limiter (bandwidth of 500MHz, threshold power of at least 20 dBm, rise time below 200ns). In addition, further studies are planned to investigate the possibility of increasing the frequency through material and design optimization.
The success of SWIM requires and relies at this TRL level on a strong complementarity (materials, magnetism, microwave design and test) such as the one of the consortium we have gathered, which will allow us to develop tools and prototypes allowing the future integration of the magnonic technology at a system level by non-expert microwave engineers.