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Epitaxial Single-Crystal ScAlN on 4H-SiC for High-Velocity, Low-Loss SAW Devices

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2020-01-01
AuthorsVikrant J. Gokhale, Brian P. Downey, Matthew T. Hardy, Eric N. Jin, J.A. Roussos
InstitutionsNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, United States Naval Research Laboratory
Citations18

This report presents some of the first experimental characterization of surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices using single-crystal ScAlN epitaxially grown on SiC. Due to the excellent wave guiding provided by the ScAlN/SiC heterostructure, SAW phase velocities greater than 12,000 m/s are measured, higher than comparable ScAlN SAW devices on other substrates. The phase velocity dispersion for measured devices compares well with simulated values. We observe up to k <sup xmlns:mml=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathMLā€ xmlns:xlink=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xlinkā€&gt;2&lt;/sup> =0.52% even for very small thickness to wavelength ratios ( ). We show that epitaxial ScAlN/SiC can achieve extremely low SAW propagation loss ( ), comparable to state-of-the-art piezoelectric/diamond SAW devices, and are linear at CW RF power levels up to ā‰ˆ30 dBm (1W), with 1 dB gain compression at 34 dBm and an IIP3 of 45 dBm.

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