Exploring Low-Loss Surface Acoustic Wave Devices on Heterogeneous Substrates

This article presents shear horizontal surface acoustic wave (SH-SAW) devices with excellent temperature stability and low loss on ultrathin Y42-cut lithium tantalate film on sapphire substrate (LiTaO₃-on-sapphire, LTOS). The demonstrated resonators exhibit scalable resonances from 1.76 to 3.17 GHz, effective electromechanical coupling coefficients between 5.1% and 7.6%, and quality factors (Bode-Q) between 419 and 3019. The filter with a center frequency of 3.26 GHz features a suppressed spurious passband, a 3-dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 3%, and a minimum insertion loss (IL) of 2.39 dB. In addition, coplanar waveguides (CPWs) and SH-SAW resonators built on LTOS and LiTaO₃-on-insulator (LTOI) substrates were compared over a temperature range of 25 °C-150 °C. Due to the extremely high resistivity of the sapphire and the excellent thermal stability of the LiTaO₃/sapphire interface, the IL of the CPW and the impedance ratio (in addition to Bode-Q) of the SH-SAW on the LTOS are maintained well even at 150 °C, while those on the LTOI seriously deteriorate. Of these, the impedance attenuation of LTOS-SAW at the antiresonant frequency is only 3.7 dB at 150 °C, whereas that of LTOI-SAW reaches 9.6 dB, demonstrating excellent temperature stability of the LTOS substrate's radio frequency (RF) performance. Overall, the SAW devices on LTOS substrates show great potential for temperature-sensitive and low-loss applications in RF wireless communications.