SAW Physics

History

Piezo-electricity was discovered by the Curie brothers in 1880, named by Hankel in 1881 and used by Cady in 1921 in the form of a quartz resonator to stabilise electronic oscillators In 1887, Lord Rayleigh discovered the SAW propagation mode and in a classic paper predicted the wave properties

SAW Sensors

Piezo-electric SAW sensors utilise an oscillatory electric field to generate an acoustic wave which propagates on the substrate surface, then transforms back to an electric field for measurement Mechanical strain affects both the propagation path length and the surface wave velocity Changes in frequency and/or phase correlate with surface strain Rayleigh waves have a velocity typically 5 orders of magnitude slower than the corresponding electro-magnetic wave - the slowest to propagate in solids Wave amplitudes are typically 1 nm and wavelengths 1 - 100m Most acoustic energy is confined within 1 wavelength of the surface so that SAW sensors have the highest sensitivity of the various acoustic wave sensor types SAW sensors typically operate between 100MHz and 1GHz

Piezo-Electric Substrate Materials and SAW Fabrication

The most common piezo-electric material for SAW sensors is single crystal quartz First order temperature effects are minimised by selection of cut angle and propagation direction Other piezo-electric materials include zinc oxide (ZnO), langasite (La3Ga5SiO14), lithium niobate (LiNbO3), lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) and lead zirconium titanate (PZT) A photo-lithographic process generates an aluminium inter-digital transducer (IDT) on the surface SAW sensor performance is optimised by adjusting the physical dimensions of the IDT