TY - JOUR
T1 - A Unidirectional Transducer Design for Scaling GHz AlN-Based RF Microsystems
AU - Lu, Ruochen
AU - Link, Steffen
AU - Gong, Songbin
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received November 1, 2019; accepted January 16, 2020. Date of publication January 20, 2020; date of current version May 26, 2020. This work was supported by the DARPA-Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) Near Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO) Program. (Corresponding author: Ruochen Lu.) The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 USA (e-mail: rlu10. . .edu). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.2968245
Publisher Copyright:
© 1986-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2020/6
Y1 - 2020/6
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Acoustic delay lines (ADLs)
KW - aluminum nitride (AlN)
KW - lamb mode
KW - piezoelectric transducers
KW - radio frequency (RF) microsystems
KW - unidirectional transducers
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085533934&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85085533934&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.2968245
DO - 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.2968245
M3 - Article
C2 - 31976889
AN - SCOPUS:85085533934
SN - 0885-3010
VL - 67
SP - 1250
EP - 1257
JO - IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
JF - IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
IS - 6
M1 - 8963898
ER -