Design on semiconductor coupled SAW convolver

Abstract

This paper presents results of a design study on a semiconductor coupled surface acoustic wave (SAW) convolver in which bi-directionally propagating SAWs, on a piezoelectric substrate with a high coupling coefficient, couple with bonded semiconductor diodes through multistrips. To obtain convolution signals with a high efficiency, we adopted a diode-balanced bridge structure for the non-linear operation. We also found that the tapping pitches of the multi-strip electrodes have robustness against operation frequency variation and temperature-dependent variation on the delay of the SAW. We verified the effectiveness of the device in a circuit simulation and an experiment on a test circuit, which was fabricated by using an epitaxial lift-off film-bonding process.