A Unidirectional Transducer Design for Scaling GHz AlN-Based RF Microsystems

Ruochen Lu, Steffen Link, Songbin Gong

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this work, we present a novel unidirectional transducer design for frequency scaling aluminum nitride (AlN)-based radio frequency (RF) microsystems. The proposed thickness-field-excited single-phase unidirectional transducers (TFE-SPUDT) adopt 5/16 wavelength electrodes and, thus, enable efficient piezoelectric transduction with better frequency scalability. The design space of the TFE-SPUDT is theoretically explored and validated using the acoustic delay line (ADL) testbeds. The ADL testbeds with a large feature size of~\mu \text{m}$ show a center frequency of 1 GHz, a minimum insertion loss (IL) of 4.9 dB, and a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 5.3%, significantly surpassing the IL and frequency scalability of the previously reported AlN transducers. The design approach can potentially contribute to various AlN-based RF microsystems for signal processing, physical sensing, optomechanical interaction, and quantum acoustic applications, and are readily extendable to other piezoelectric platforms.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number8963898
Pages (from-to)1250-1257
Number of pages8
JournalIEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
Volume67
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2020

Keywords

  • Acoustic delay lines (ADLs)
  • aluminum nitride (AlN)
  • lamb mode
  • piezoelectric transducers
  • radio frequency (RF) microsystems
  • unidirectional transducers

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Instrumentation
  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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