Spurious resonance suppression in ZnO based thin-film baw resonators: FEM modeling and experiment

Abstract

Spurious resonance suppression in ZnO based thin film BAW resonators by the boundary ring method of (1) is studied. Electrical responses of resonators with varying width of the boundary ring structure are measured. Very clean resonator response is reached with optimum dimensions. Emergence of the piston mode and simultaneous spurious resonance suppression is demonstrated by 2D FEM simulation with a model corresponding to the measured devices. Good correlation between measurement and simulation is found. I. INTRODUCTION Thin film bulk acoustic wave resonators and filters for the GHz range have been intensively developed during the last ca. 10 years due to great demand in the mobile communications industry. Main application of the thin film BAW devices is in the band pass filters of the antenna circuit of mobile phones. With the thin film BAW technology, low insertion loss, high power handling, steep pass band skirts and small footprint are sought together with low manufacturing cost. The BAW filters are also inherently better applicable for higher frequencies (> 2 GHz) than SAW filters due to the lack of critical dimensions. Also as BAW resonators do not rely on a special crystalline substrate, possibility to integrate them with silicon IC:s exists. In order to create high performance filters, the BAW resonators they consist of, must fulfill certain performance criteria. Most importantly the effective coupling coefficient K 2 determines the attainable bandwidth of the filter and the Q- values affect the insertion loss and pass band skirt steepness. In addition, the resonator should not have ripple in or near the inductive region of its electrical response. In a low insertion loss filter this is only attained by suppressing the spurious resonances in some manner.