Dispersion of Lamb waves under a periodic metal grating in aluminum nitride plates

Dispersion of Lamb waves propagating in AlN plates with a periodic Al grating on the top surface and an Al electrode on the bottom surface is investigated using the numerical technique SDA-FEM-SDA, which combines finite element modeling (FEM) analysis of the electrode region with spectral-domain analysis (SDA) of the adjacent multi-layered half-spaces. Characteristics of zero-order and higher-order Lamb waves are presented as functions of plate thickness and spectral frequency, which varies in the first Brillouin zone. The structures of typical Lamb waves are examined via visualization of the instantaneous displacement fields in the AlN plate confined between the grating and the bottom electrode. The mechanism of building hybrid modes, which arise from intermode coupling between the counter-propagating Lamb waves of different symmetry and order, is illustrated by two examples of modes propagating with wavelengths λ = 3p and λ = 4p, where p is the pitch of the grating.