Kilian Shambaugh | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Spurious-Free Lithium Niobate Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonator with Grounded-Ring Electrode

High-performance piezoelectric resonators are promising energy storage elements for piezoelectric power conversion due to their compact footprint and low loss at frequencies where conventional magnetic components become bulky and inefficient. However, their practical use is often limited by the trade-off between a high electromechanical coupling coefficient (k^2) for wide-band operation and the emergence of spurious acoustic modes that limit the resonators' inductive bandwidth. This work reports a spurious-free thickness-extensional (TE)-mode bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonator in single-crystal lithium niobate (LN) based on a grounded-ring electrode architecture. The proposed structure is analyzed through simulation and experimentally validated using electrical characterization and laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV). The results show that the grounded ring modifies the effective boundary conditions of the acoustic device, enabling a piston-like modal response that suppresses lateral spurious modes across the inductive band. The demonstrated device operates at 10.14 MHz and achieves an electromechanical coupling coefficient of 29.6%, a maximum in-band Bode quality factor (Q_Bode) of 5230, and a figure of merit (FoM, Q*k^2) of 1548. These results establish the grounded-ring TE-mode LN BAW resonator as a practical platform for piezoelectric power conversion and a broader design approach for realizing high-performance spurious-free acoustic resonators.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2022

Self-Aligned Single-Electrode Actuation of Tangential and Wineglass Modes using PMN-PT

Considering evolution of rotation sensing and timing applications realized in Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), flexural mode resonant shapes are outperformed by bulk acoustic wave (BAW) counterparts by achieving higher frequencies with both electrostatic and piezoelectric transduction. Within the 1-30 MHz range, which hosts BAW gyroscopes and timing references, piezoelectric and electrostatic MEMS have similar transduction efficiency. Although, when designed intelligently, electrostatic transduction allows self-alignment between electrodes and the resonator for various BAW modes, misalignment is inevitable regarding piezoelectric transduction of BAW modes that require electrode patterning. In this paper transverse piezoelectric actuation of [011] oriented single crystal lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) thin film disks is shown to excite the tangential mode and family of elliptical compound resonant modes, utilizing a self-aligned and unpatterned electrode that spans the entire disk surface. The resonant mode coupling is achieved employing a unique property of [011] PMN-PT, where the in-plane piezoelectric coefficients have opposite sign. Fabricating 1-port disk transducers, RF reflection measurements are performed that demonstrate the compound mode family shapes in 1-30 MHz range. Independent verification of mode transduction is achieved using in-plane displacement measurements with Polytec's Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV). While tangential mode achieves 40$^o$/sec dithering rate at 335 kHz resonant frequency, the n=2 wine-glass mode achieves 11.46 nm tip displacement at 8.42 MHz resonant frequency on a radius of 60 $μ$m disk resonator in air. A single electrode resonator that can excite both tangential and wine-glass modes with such metrics lays the foundation for a BAW MEMS gyroscope with a built-in primary calibration stage.

physics.app-ph↗