The Design of a Frame-Like ZnO FBAR Sensor for Achieving Uniform Mass Sensitivity Distributions

In this paper, an infinite circular ZnO thin film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) with a frame-like electrode operating at the thickness-extensional (TE) mode is studied. Two-dimensional scalar differential equations established for the problem in the Cartesian coordinate system are successfully solved by transforming them into normal Bessel equations and modified Bessel equations in the cylindrical coordinate system. Resonant frequencies and vibration distributions are obtained for this frame-like FBAR sensor. A nearly uniform mass sensitivity distribution in the active area is achieved by designing proper electrode size and mass ratio of the driving electrode to the ZnO film. Numerical results show that compared with the reported ring electrode FBAR sensor, the novel frame-like electrode FBAR can achieve a maximum optimization ratio (up to 97.90%) on the uniformity of the mass sensitivity distribution in the active area under the same structural parameters, which is also higher than the optimization ratio 77.63% obtained by the reported double-ring electrode design. Moreover, the mechanism to achieve a very uniform mass sensitivity distribution in the active area by the frame-like electrode is explained in detail according to dispersion curves. Namely, when the resonant frequency of the FBAR sensor is close to the cut-off frequency of the active region in the dispersion curve, the mass sensitivity distribution is nearly uniform. These conclusions provide a theoretical guidance for the design and optimization of ZnO FBAR mass sensors with high performance.