Heterogeneous integration of lithium tantalate thin film on quartz for high performance surface acoustic wave resonator

Abstract Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonator based on the piezo film on a foreign substrate is promising to enhance the performance of radio frequency filters. In this work, the 4 inch wafer-scale lithium tantalate thin film on quartz (LTOQ) heterogenous substrate was fabricated by ion-cut process. The cut angle of quartz was optimized to achieve high-quality factor (Q) based on finite element analysis. The average film thickness and the film nonuniformity for the whole wafer are 602 nm and ±2.2%, respectively. The lithium tantalate film exhibits single-crystalline quality where the full width at half-maximum of high-resolution X-ray diffraction rocking curve is 47.4 arcsec. The shear horizonal surface acoustic wave resonator based on the LTOQ structure exhibits a maximum Bode-Q exceeding 3000 and the electromechanical coupling coefficient of 10.26%. The temperature coefficient of frequency at resonant frequency and anti-resonant frequency are −25.21 ppm °C−1 and −35.22 ppm °C−1, respectively.