Thin-Film Lithium Niobate on Insulator Surface Acoustic Wave Devices for 6G Centimeter Bands

In this work, we investigate the frequency scaling of shear-horizontal (S.H.) surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators based on a lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) substrate into the centimeter bands for 6G wireless systems. Prototyped resonators with wavelengths ranging between 240 nm and 400 nm were fabricated, and the experimental results exhibit a successful frequency scaling between 9.05 and 13.37 GHz. However, a noticeable performance degradation can be observed as the resonance frequency <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">(fₛ)</tex> scales. Such an effect is expected to be caused by non-ideal <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">helec/λ</tex> for smaller <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">λ</tex> devices. The optimized LNOI SH-SAW with a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">λ</tex> of 400 nm exhibits a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">fₛ</tex> of 9.05 GHz, a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">keff²</tex> of 15%, <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Qₘₐₓ</tex> of 213 and a FoM of 32, which indicates a successful implementation for device targeting centimeter bands.