High-frequency surface acoustic waves excited on thin-oriented LiNbO3 single-crystal layers transferred onto silicon

The need for high-frequency, wide-band filters has instigated many developments based on combining thin piezoelectric films and high acoustic velocity materials (sapphire, diamond-like carbon, silicon, etc.) to ease the manufacture of devices operating above 2 GHz. In the present work, a technological process has been developed to achieve thin-oriented, single-crystal lithium niobate (LiNbO3) layers deposited on (100) silicon wafers for the fabrication of radio-frequency (RF) surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. The use of such oriented thin films is expected to favor large coupling coefficients together with a good control of the layer properties, enabling one to chose the best combination of layer orientation to optimize the device. A theoretical analysis of the elastic wave assumed to propagate on such a combination of material is first exposed. Technological aspects then are described briefly. Experimental results are presented and compared to the state of art.