Acoustoelectronic Rayleigh Wave Devices

Electrons or charged particles can be made to interact with the electric fields of Rayleigh waves in piezoelectric crystal surfaces. The charged particles can be in vacuum, in semiconductors or bound to traps in solids or on surfaces. During the past two decades a large variety of acoustoelectronic amplifiers, signal processors and image processing devices were demonstrated. I shall discuss in some detail the more successful versions of these devices by quoting or reproducing device characteristics that appeared primarily in the 1972 to 1984 Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings. The reader interested in the full range of concepts and devices could refer to the references contained in the articles from which this material is drawn.