Design and fabrication of an surface acoustic wave resonator based on AlN/4H-SiC material for harsh environments

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors and micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology provide a promising solution for measurement in harsh environments such as gas turbines. In this paper, a SAW resonator (size: 1107 μm× 721 μm) based on the AlN/4H-SiC multilayer structure is designed and simulated. A MEMS-compatible fabrication process is employed to fabricate the resonator. The results show that highly c-axis-oriented AlN thin films deposited on the 4H-SiC substrate are obtained, with that the diffraction peak of AlN is 36.10° and the lowest full width at half maximum (FWHM) value is only 1.19°. The test results of the network analyzer are consistent with the simulation curve, which is very encouraging and indicates that our work is a significant attempt to solve the measurement problems mainly including high temperature stability of sensitive structures and the heat transmission of leads in harsh environments. It is essential to get the best performance of SAW resonator, optimize and characterize the behaviors in high temperatures in future research.