Over 12% of Coupling Coefficient Demonstrated by 3GHz Sc0.12Al0.88N Based Laterally Coupled Alternating Thickness (LCAT) Mode Resonators

In this work, we report a laterally coupled alternating thickness (LCAT) mode resonators operating at 3GHz with an effective electromechanical coupling coefficient (k ² _eff ) of 12.1%, using 12% scandium-doped aluminum nitride (Sc _0.12 Al _0.88 N) as the piezoelectric layer. The top and bottom electrodes are formed by patterning two groups of interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) on the top and bottom surface of the Sc _0.12 Al _0.88 N layer, respectively, both made of molybdenum (Mo). The thickness of the top electrode layer, Sc _0.12 Al _0.88 N layer, and the bottom electrode layer is 0.1μm, 0.7μm, and 0.2μm, respectively. The designed resonator is fabricated by in-house 200mm piezoelectric platform, with the Sc _0.12 Al _0.88 N deposited by physical vapour deposition (PVD). Electrical measurement results show that the series resonant frequency (f _s ) and the parallel resonant frequency (f _p ) are 2.96 GHz and 3.10 GHz, respectively, and the corresponding impedance at f _s (R _s ) and impedance at f _p (Rp) are 3.19 Ω and 546 Ω, respectively. Besides the high k ² _eff of 12.1%, no spurious resonant modes are observed within a wide 1.2GHz frequency spectrum, demonstrating great potential of the reported Sc _0.12 Al _0.88 N based LCAT mode resonator in 5G duplexing solution on a single chip.