Enhanced electromechanical coupling in SAW resonators based on sputtered non-polar Al0.77Sc0.23N 112¯ thin films

Abstract

Non-polar a-plane Al0.77Sc0.23N 112¯0 thin films were prepared by magnetron sputter epitaxy on r-plane Al2O3(11¯02) substrates. Different substrate off-cut angles were compared, and the off-cut angle of 3° resulted in the best structural quality of the AlScN layer. Structural characterization by x-ray diffraction confirmed that single phase, wurtzite-type, a-plane AlScN 112¯0, surface acoustic wave resonators were fabricated with wavelengths λ = 2–10 μm (central frequency up to 1.7 GHz) with two orthogonal in-plane propagation directions. A strong dependence of electromechanical coupling on the in-plane orientation was observed. Compared to conventional c-plane AlScN based resonators, an increase of 185–1000% in the effective electromechanical coupling was achieved with only a fractional decrease of <10.5% in series resonance frequency.