Piezoelectric Thin-Film Resonators and Ferroelectric Nitrides for RF and MEMS
This community develops thin-film piezoelectric materials and resonator structures for high-frequency signal processing, sensing, and emerging ferroelectric memory applications.
The work centers on the engineering of aluminum nitride, aluminum scandium nitride, and lithium niobate thin films to create surface acoustic wave and bulk acoustic wave resonators. Key research areas include optimizing electromechanical coupling coefficients, enhancing quality factors, and integrating these structures with CMOS back-end-of-line processes. A significant strand of investigation focuses on the ferroelectric properties of wurtzite nitrides, exploring polarization switching, endurance, and potential use in non-volatile memory and field-effect transistors. Applications span 5G and 6G wireless filters, delay lines, gyroscopes, and acoustofluidic devices for particle manipulation.
Scandium research has the largest share of this community’s output at 4.3%, followed by niobium at 1.1% and aluminum at 0.5%. Lithium contributes the highest paper count within this group, with 855 papers, representing 0.4% of all lithium research.
The community comprises 4,936 papers, published primarily in Applied Physics Letters, Micromachines, and the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.
Recent work includes the development of low-power embedded sensor nodes with on-board machine learning, graded phononic metamaterials, and ferroelectric aluminum scandium nitride films demonstrating high write cycling endurance.