Biblio

Solidly mounted resonators (SMRs) built on dielectric acoustic reflectors can save several fabrication steps as well as avoid undesired parasitic effects when exciting extended electrodes via capacitive coupling. In this work we manufacture and measure the frequency response of AlN-based SMRs built on 7-layer ZnO/SiO2 acoustic reflectors with SiO2 working as low impedance material and ZnO as high impedance material. After applying a 700°C treatment, their frequency response is measured again and compared with the pre-treatment measurements.

Expanding techniques for chip-scale acoustic wave focusing would open doors for advancements in signal processing and quantum electromechanical microsystems. In this paper, we present a method for acoustic wave focusing and wavefront shaping at radio frequencies (RF), validated with thin-film lithium niobite on a low-loss and high coupling silicon carbide (LiNbO3-on-SiC) testbed. By depositing a metal layer, we can mitigate the piezoelectric stiffening effect, and reduce the acoustic wave speed in a patterned area. Employing a design analogous to geometric optical systems, efficient acoustic wave focusing is experimentally observed. With more development, this technique could be employed in emerging acoustic microsystems.

Emerging next generation wireless communication devices call for high-performance filters that operate at 3-10 GHz frequency range and offer low loss, small form factor, wide bandwidth and steep skirts. Bulk and surface acoustic wave devices have been long used in the RF front-end for filtering applications, however their operation frequencies are mostly below 2.6 GHz band. To scale up the frequency of the filters, the thickness of the piezoelectric material needs to be reduced to sub-micron ranges. One of the challenges of such scaling is maintaining high electromechanical coupling as the film thickness decreases, which in turn, determines the filter bandwidth.Aluminum Nitride (AlN) - popular in today's film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs) and mostly deposited using sputtering techniques-shows degraded crystal quality and poor electromechanical coupling when the thickness of AlN film is smaller than 1 μm.In this work, we propose using high-quality single-crystalline AlN and Scandium (Sc)-doped AlN epi-layers grown on Si substrates, wherein high crystal quality is maintained for ultra-thin films of only 400 nm thickness. Experimental results verify improved kt2 for 3-10 GHz resonators, with quality factors of the order of 250 and kt2 values of up to 5%based on bulk acoustic wave resonators. The experimental results suggest that single-crystal Sc-AlN is a great material candidate for 5G resonators and filters.