Designed Structures of Interdigital Electrodes for Thin Film SAW Devices

Abstract

This paper studied the impact of the microstructure of interdigital electrodes on the performance of surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators and proposed an innovative piston, dummy finger and tilt (PDT) structure, which was then applied to the GLONASS L3 band filters. Through the adoption of 3D finite element simulation (FEM), photolithography, and testing on an incredible high-performance surface acoustic wave (I.H.P. SAW) substrate, it is concluded that the total aperture length is 20T (T is period), resulting in a more optimal resonator performance; changing the width and length of the piston can suppress transverse modes spurious, but it does not enhance impedance ratio; to further improve the quality of the SAW resonator, the proposed PDT structure has been experimentally proven to not only effectively suppress transverse modes spurious but also possess a high impedance ratio. By utilizing a PDT structure within a “T + π” topology circuit, we successfully designed and manufactured a GLONASS L3 band filter with a bandwidth of 8 MHz and an insertion loss of 3.73 dB. The design of these resonators and filters can be applied to the construction of SAW filters in similar frequency bands such as BeiDou B2 band or GPS L2/L5 band.

Keywords

• SAW resonator
• interdigital electrodes
• transverse modes
• impedance ratio
• PDT structure
• GLONASS filter