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Geometry characteristics and wide temperature behavior of silicon-based GaN surface acoustic wave resonators with ultrahigh quality factor

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Abstract

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators with an ultrahigh Q-factor are designed and fabricated on silicon-based gallium nitride (GaN/Si). The temperature-dependent performance is characterized over a wide range, from 10 to 500 K. Finite element analysis is employed to guide the design of the SAW resonator from indications of the Rayleigh mode and weak propagation direction dependence of SAW in the c-plane of GaN/Si. The SAW resonator with 100 pairs of interdigital transducers (IDT), 100 pairs of grating reflectors (GR) for each side, aperture size of 80 µm, metallization ratio of 0.5, and electrode width of 500 nm resonates at 1.9133 GHz accordingly with an ultrahigh Q-factor of 7622 at room temperature, which contributes the fr × Qr, up to 14.583×1012 Hz. A resonator operating over 10 to 500 K indicates an approximately linear decreasing temperature dependence above 280 K while being approximately constant below 40 K. The fitting to resonator characteristics using the modified Butterworth Van Dyke (mBVD) model reveals a reduction in both the electrode and mechanical losses while worsening the dielectric loss with cooling down.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program (Grant Nos. 2020YFA0709800, 2021YFC3002200), National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2015CB352101), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51861145202, U20A20168, 92064002), and Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 4184091), Start-up Funding from Tsinghua University (Grant No. 533306001), Research Fund from Beijing Innovation Center for Future Chip, Independent Research Program of Tsinghua University (Grant No. 2014Z01006), Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (Grant No. JCYJ20150831192224146), Guangdong Province Key Field Research and Development Program (Grant No. 2019B010143002), and Tsinghua University Guoqiang Institute Grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Integrated Circuits, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Guofang Yu, Renrong Liang, Haiming Zhao, Lei Xiao, Jie Cui, Yue Zhao, Wenpu Cui, Jing Wang, Jun Xu, Jun Fu & Tianling Ren

  2. Beijing National Research Center for Information Science Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Guofang Yu, Renrong Liang, Haiming Zhao, Lei Xiao, Jie Cui, Yue Zhao, Wenpu Cui, Jing Wang, Jun Xu, Jun Fu & Tianling Ren

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  1. Guofang Yu
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  2. Renrong Liang
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  10. Jun Fu
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Correspondence to Renrong Liang or Jun Fu.

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Yu, G., Liang, R., Zhao, H. et al. Geometry characteristics and wide temperature behavior of silicon-based GaN surface acoustic wave resonators with ultrahigh quality factor. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 67, 122402 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3698-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3698-7

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