Surface acoustic waves on the {110}-cut of gallium arsenide

Piezoelectric semiconductors such as GaAs are of interest for signal processing devices due to the possibility of monolithic integration of SAW and active electronic circuits on the same substrate. The common crystal orientation of GaAs used in the surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices is the ⟨110⟩ propagating wave in the {100} plane, which supports a leaky wave. In this work, the characteristics of surface wave propagation in the {110} plane of GaAs, which supports both the Rayleigh and the Bleustein-Gulyaev surface wave modes, are studied. A number of devices have been fabricated and studied using laser probe and S-parameter measurement techniques. The SAW velocity, attenuation, piezoelectric coupling constant, slowness surface, beam profile, and the transducer characteristics have been measured, and the experimental results agree well with the theoretical calculations for both types of the surface wave modes