Giant Reflection Coefficient on Sc0.26Al0.74N Polycrystalline Diamond Surface Acoustic Wave Resonators

Since the commercialization of surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices, the technology is steadily increasing the device performances without compromising their power handling, size and price. Herein, one-port SAW resonators are fabricated on scandium aluminum nitride (Sc0.26Al0.74N)/polycrystalline diamond heterostructures. SAW propagation properties are studied using three different piezoelectric thin-film thicknesses within the heterostructure. The Rayleigh and Sezawa resonance frequencies are above 1.5 and 2.5 GHz, respectively, achieving Sezawa mode reflection coefficients below -50 dB. The polycrystalline diamond substrate is synthesized by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) on top of a 500 mu m-thick Si (001) substrate. The Sc0.26Al0.74N thin films are synthesized by reactive sputtering at nominally room temperature. The thin film's composition is analyzed by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the X-ray diffraction (XRD) omega scans below 3 degrees indicates that the synthesized Sc0.26Al0.74N thin films are highly c-axis oriented. The electromechanical coupling coefficient, quality factor, and dielectric loss parameters are computed by curve fitting the device electrical measurements to the simulation results of a modified Butterworth Van Dyke (mBVD) model implemented in the advance design system (ADS) tool.