Piezoelectric properties of GaAs for application in stress transducers

In this paper piezoelectric stress transducers are proposed on the base of GaAs and AlxGa(1−x)As. These materials exhibit reasonable piezoelectric properties and since GaAs based integrated circuits have reached a high maturity they are a promising choice for integrated stress transducers. An additional feature of the high band-gap material GaAs is its superior high-temperature performance in comparison with Si. In this paper the piezoelectric and related properties of GaAs and AlxGa(1−x) are discussed. Therefore the piezoelectric tensors for the commonly used (100) and (111) oriented substrates are derived. These calculations are verified by measurements of some realized sensors using different substrate orientations.