Lamb wave resonant pressure micro-sensor utilizing a thin-film aluminium nitride membrane

In this work, pressure sensitivities of aluminium nitride (AlN) thin film plate acoustic resonators (FPAR) operating at the lowest-order symmetric (S0), the first-order asymmetric (A1) as well as the first-order symmetric (S1) Lamb modes are theoretically and experimentally studied in a comparative manner. The finite element method analysis has also been performed to get a further insight into the FPAR pressure sensitivity. The theoretical predictions are found to be in good agreement with the experiment. The S0 Lamb mode is identified as the most pressure-sensitive FPAR mode, while the A1 and S1 modes are found to be much less sensitive. Further, the S0 and the A1 modes exhibit almost equal temperature sensitivities, which can be exploited to eliminate the temperature drift by comparing the resonance frequencies of the latter two modes.