Thin Film Resonator Technology

This paper will present an overview of the thin film resonator technology discussing issues of materials, materials processing, device physics, and potential applications in oscillators and bandpass filters including performance characteristics achieved to date. The thin film resonator (TFR) was initially demonstrated in the form of a composite membrane structure on a silicon substrate and later on GaAs. The minimum requirements for an acoustic resonator are reflecting surfaces, a means of exciting the acoustic wave (piezoelectric films), and a set of electrodes (photolithographically defined metal film patterns). With these basic principles in mind, a number of variations of the basic structure have been studied. From a technological standpoint the impact of the TFR technology stems from two main features; first, the thin film approach allows fabrication of fundamental mode resonators to 2GHz and possibly beyond, and second, the resonators can be fabricated on semiconductor substrates and integrated with active devices. The fruition of the TFR into an established technology involves solving complex problems in thin film materials growth, materials processing (including IC process cornpatability), device physics, and systems integration. These issues will be discussed and progress made on these problems will be cited with specific examples.

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