Measurement and FEM/BEM simulation of transverse effects in SAW resonators on lithium tantalate.

It is well known that transverse effects contribute significantly to the loss of SAW resonators on lithium tantalate. In particular, for frequencies above resonance, the surface wave is not guided inside the transducer and radiates into the busbars. In addition, because bulk modes can also be excited, scalar models are not sufficient to accurately predict transverse effects. It is also known that the layout of a SAW resonator (electrode gaps and dummy electrodes) has a strong impact on the transverse effects. In this paper, a periodic FEM/BEM model is presented and is used to simulate the transverse effects for various SAW resonator layouts. Test devices matching those simulated are fabricated and measured; the measured results are compared with the simulated results and show good agreement. By analyzing the dispersion curves produced from the FEM/BEM model in the different regions of the device, several frequency bands corresponding to different transverse behaviors are identified. These results are consistent with the elastic displacements, also computed by the FEM/BEM model. It is further shown that guided conditions in the gap between the transducer and the busbar occur for a frequency range above resonance. This result is in agreement with measurements showing that resonators with smaller gaps exhibit smaller spurious responses in their admittance.

A SAW resonator with two-dimensional reflectors.

It is known that a part of the loss of leaky SAW resonators is due to radiation of acoustic energy in the bus-bars. Many researchers are working on so-called phononic crystals. A 2-D grating of very strong reflectors allows these devices to fully reflect, for a given frequency band, any incoming wave. A new device based on the superposition of a regular SAW resonator and a 2-D periodic grating of reflectors is proposed. Several arrangements and geometries of the reflectors were studied and compared experimentally on 48 degrees rotated Y-cut lithium tantalate. In particular, a very narrow aperture (7.5 lambda) resonator was manufactured in the 900 MHz range. Because of its small size, this resonator has a resonance Q of only 575 when using the standard technology, whereas a resonance Q of 1100 was obtained for the new device without degradation of the other characteristics. Because of the narrow aperture, the admittance of the standard resonator showed a very strong parasitic above the resonance frequency, whereas this effect is drastically reduced for the new device. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the new approach.

Developments on standoff detection of explosive materials by differential reflectometry.

Differential reflectometry (DR) is an effective tool to supplement existing explosives detection systems thus making the combined unit more effective than one tool alone. It is an optical technique in which the light beam (UV) emanates from an extended distance onto the substance under investigation, thus rendering it to be a standoff method. DR allows the measurement of the energies that electrons absorb from photons as they are raised into higher, allowed energy states. These electron transitions serve as a "fingerprint" for identifying substances. The device can be made portable; it is fast, safe for the public, does not require human involvement, is cost effective, and most of all, does not require ingestion of a suspicious substance into an instrument. Various embodiments are presented.