A laterally excited bulk acoustic resonator with scattering vias in electrodes

• Published in: Applied physics letters 2023-08, Vol.123 (9)
• Main Authors: Wen, Zhiwei, Liu, Wenjuan, Luo, Tiancheng, Tong, Xin, Xie, Ying, Gu, Xiyu, Liu, Yan, Cai, Yao, Guo, Shishang, Wang, Jian, Sun, Chengliang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 5G mobile communication; Applied physics; Bulk acoustic wave devices; Electrodes; Finite element method; Frequency filters; Impedance matching; Lithium niobates; Resonators; Scattering; Silicon dioxide; Standing waves; Substrates; Thin films
• ISSN: 0003-6951; 1077-3118
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0161447

Laterally excited bulk acoustic resonators (XBARs) using interdigital electrodes are currently limited in potential 5G applications due to the accompanied spurious modes and small capacitance. This Letter presents an XBAR with scattering vias in electrodes, named SV-BAR. The non-parallel boundaries thoroughly disrupt the coherent formation of standing waves in the lateral direction, thereby suppressing the higher-order spurious modes. The duty factor of SV-BAR is optimized as 0.5 using COMSOL Multiphysics finite element analysis for the 50 Ω impedance matching. The SV-BAR is fabricated using a 390 nm Z-cut LiNbO3 on an insulator substrate and exhibits an impressive ratio of Zp/Zs near 64.5 dB, a Kt2 of 21.80% at 4.762 GHz, as well as a large value f · Bode_Qmax · Kt2 (3.43 × 1011). The measured temperature coefficient of frequency is −69.8 ppm/°C, which can be compensated using SiO2 thin films. The SV-BAR provides an effective solution for high-performance radio frequency filters for 5G communication.