Tunable thin film bulk acoustic wave resonators with improved Q-factor

The tunable solidly mounted Ba0.25Sr0.75TiO3 (BSTO) thin film bulk acoustic wave resonators (TFBARs) with improved Q-factor are fabricated and characterized. The BSTO films are grown by magnetron sputtering at temperature 600 degrees C and extremely low sputter gas pressure 2 mTorr using on-axis configuration. The measured TFBARs Q-factor is more than 250 and mechanical Q-factor is more than 350 at 5 GHz resonance frequency. The improvement in the Q-factor is associated with reduction in the BSTO film grain misorientation. The latter is responsible for generation of shear waves leaking through the Bragg reflector and corresponding acoustic loss. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3441413]