First Author et al.

: Title 9

Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Acoustic Filter

at 23.5 GHz with 2.38 dB IL and 18.2% FBW
Omar Barrera, Sinwoo Cho, Lezli Matto, Jack Kramer, Kenny Huynh,
Vakhtang Chulukhadze, Yen-Wei Chang, Mark S. Goorsky, and Ruochen Lu


Abstract—This work reports an acoustic filter at 23.5 GHz
with a low insertion loss (IL) of 2.38 dB and a 3-dB fractional
bandwidth (FBW) of 18.2%, significantly surpassing the
state-of-the-art. The device leverages electrically coupled
acoustic resonators in 100 nm 128° Y-cut lithium niobate
(LiNbO3) piezoelectric thin film, operating in the first-order
antisymmetric (A1) mode. A new film stack, namely
transferred thin-film LiNbO3 on silicon (Si) substrate with an
intermediate amorphous silicon (a-Si) layer, facilitates the
record-breaking performance at millimeter-wave
(mmWave). The filter features a compact footprint of 0.56
mm2. In this letter, acoustic and EM consideration, along
with material characterization with X-ray diffraction and
verified with cross-sectional electron microscopy are
reported. Upon further development, the reported filter
platform can enable various front-end signal-processing
functions at mmWave. Fig. 1 Survey of (a) IL and (b) FBW in acoustic filters above 5 GHz.
Index Terms—acoustic filters, lithium niobate, millimeter-
wave, piezoelectric devices, thin-film devices

I. INTRODUCTION

C OMPACT radio frequency (RF) front-end filter

components are indispensable in mobile devices. Among
various filter technologies [1], acoustic resonator-based filters
are unique, providing four orders of magnitude smaller sizes
compared to electromagnetic (EM) alternatives along with
better frequency selectivity [2]–[4]. Acoustic resonators
convert electrical signals to mechanical vibrations and vice
versa through piezoelectricity [5]. Thus, one can process
electrical signals in acoustics, while benefiting from shorter
wavelengths and better energy confinement [4]. In incumbent
Fig. 2 (a) Filter circuit, and resonator (b) top and (c) side schematics.
RF front ends, thin-film bulk acoustic wave resonators (FBAR)
and surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices are the dominant providing low-loss and compact filtering solutions [16].
filtering solutions [6], [7]. A significant amount of commercial Nevertheless, achieving mmWave acoustic filters is not
and academic success has been demonstrated in the sub-6 GHz trivial [survey in Fig. 1 (a)(b)], due to the limited availability of
frequency band using the aforementioned acoustic devices high-performance acoustic resonators at mmWave. One
using aluminum nitride/scandium aluminum nitride frequency scaling method uses smaller feature sizes or thinner
(AlN/ScAlN) [8]–[10] and lithium niobate/lithium tantalate films for wavelength reduction [17]–[21], which inevitably
(LiNbO3/LiTaO3) [11]–[15]. With the ever-growing demand suffers from excessive loss, i.e., lower quality factor (Q), and
for wireless bandwidth, RF front-end devices keep developing higher insertion loss (IL), due to its fabrication difficulties and
into millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands, toward higher attenuation in ultra-thin film. An alternative frequency scaling
frequency and wider fractional bandwidth (FBW). Hence, method uses higher-order modes [22], [23] However, this
scaling acoustics into mmWave will play a monumental role in method is intrinsically limited by reduced electromechanical
Manuscript received 1 June 2023; revised XX June 2023; accepted coupling (k²), resulting in higher IL and lower FBW.
XX June 2023. This work was supported by DARPA COmpact Front- More recently, first-order antisymmetric (A1) mode
end Filters at the ElEment-level (COFFEE).
O. Barrera, S. Cho, J. Kramer, V. Chulukhadze, Y.-W. Chang, and resonators have been demonstrated at mmWave, using thin-film
R. Lu are with The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA LiNbO3 transferred on low-loss substrates with intermediate
(email: [email protected]). L. Matto, K. Huynh, and M. Goorsky are
with University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
First Author et al.: Title 9

Fig. 3 (a) Simulated admittance amplitude, inset key specifications and

vibration mode shape. (b) Simulated filter response.

Fig. 5 Microscopic images of fabricated (a) series resonator, (b) shunt

resonator, and (c) filter. Key dimensions are listed in the table.

128° Y-cut LiNbO3 thin-film, suspended over a silicon (Si)

substrate with 1 μm thick a-Si bonding layer [Fig. 2 (b)]. Si is
selected as the sacrificial layer for its ease of mechanical
suspension. The electric field generated between IDT fingers
excites the A1 mode through the e15 piezoelectric coefficient.
The resonator design follows that in [24], using aluminum for
electrodes. Additionally, a thick metal layer acts as a natural
heatsink and lowers electrical loss. A list of key design
parameters is labeled in Fig. 2 (c) and listed in Fig. 5.
COMSOL finite element analysis (FEA) simulated A1
resonator admittance is plotted in Fig. 3 (a), showing high k2 of
46%. The series and shunt resonators are designed with
different film thicknesses (more specifically, 75 nm for series
and 90 nm for shunt) to achieve the necessary shift in resonance
(fs) for the 23.5 GHz bandpass filter [26]. The static capacitance
C0 is chosen to match the impedance of the filter to 50 Ω while
providing 12 dB out-of-band (OoB) rejection. The resonator Q
is assumed to be 50 from earlier results [27]. The simulated
resonator admittance is imported into Keysight Advance
Fig. 4 (a) Cross-sectional TEM image of the stack and interfaces. (b) Design System for filter synthesis. The simulated filter [Fig. 3
XRD symmetric ω:2θ scan of the (0114) reflection. (c) XRD symmetric (b)] shows an IL of 1.47 dB, a center frequency (fc) of 23.5 GHz,
rocking curve of the (0114) reflection. a 3-dB FBW of 16%, and an OoB of 12.6 dB. The low-loss and
wideband filter response validates the promising perspective of
amorphous silicon (a-Si) [24], [25]. This resonator platform the thin-film LiNbO3 platform at mmWave.
proposed in this work, combined with the EM-acoustic co-
design, is demonstrated to be the key to unlocking mmWave III. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT
acoustic filters. In this work, we present a third-order filter at The stack for this work (LiNbO3-aSi-Si) is provided by NGK
23.5GHz in thin-film LiNbO3. The design exhibits an IL of Insulators Ltd. The thickness of the stack is first validated using
2.38dB and an FBW of 18.2%, surpassing the state-of-the-art transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging [Fig. 4 (a)].
(SoA) (Fig. 1). The filter has a small footprint of 0.56 mm². The The thickness of the LiNbO3 layer is around 150nm, and the
significant improvement demonstrated in these results paves the bonding a-Si layer is 1μm. Good interfaces between LiNbO3, a-
way towards next-generation mmWave acoustic filters. Si, and Si are observed. Next, more quantitative material
analysis is carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD). A plot of
II. DESIGN AND SIMULATION the triple-axis diffractometry (TAD) [29], [30] symmetric ω:2θ
The filter topology comprises one series resonator and two of (0114) and rocking curve of the piezoelectric layer are
identical shunt resonators [Fig. 2 (a)]. The resonator structure displayed in Fig 4 (b) and (c), respectively. The XRD measured
contains an array of interdigital transducers (IDT) on top of a a thickness of 158nm of the LiNbO3 layer, revealing slight
First Author et al.: Title 9

Fig. 8 In-band power handling response of the filter from −10 to 8 dBm.

and (c). The key dimensions are listed in Fig 5, the number of
IDT pairs refer to the entire resonator. The filter has a small
footprint of 0.75 mm by 0.74 mm, including the ground traces.
The resonators and the filter are first measured using a
Keysight vector network analyzer (VNA) in air at −15 dBm
power level. The admittance and phase of the resonators are
plotted in Fig. 6 (a) and (b), fitted with the mmWave MBVD
circuit model [24] in Fig 6 (c). Unlike conventional MBVD
models, the inductive effects from routing inductance Ls are
Fig. 6 Measured wideband admittance response in (a) amplitude and indispensable. More specifically, a higher frequency resonance
(b) phase. (c) Modified mmWave MBVD model and extracted key
resonator specifications. of electromagnetic (EM) nature occurs due to the self-
resonance of the reactive parasitics embedded in the resonator
routing. Ls and routing resistance Rs are fitted based on EM
resonances. Another effect is that the perceived resonances are
now at 18.26 GHz for the series and 22.67 GHz for the shunt,
which deviate from the mechanical resonances represented by
the motional elements Lm, Cm, and Rm. The measurements show
Q around 40 and a high k2 of around 42% (Fig. 6 inset table). Q
is defined at the anti-resonance due to the inclusion of Rs and Ls
The measured filter response is shown in Fig. 7. The 23.5
GHz filter exhibits a low IL of 2.38 dB IL, a wide 3-dB FBW
of 18.2%, a 20 dB Shape Factor of 1.72 and an OoB rejection
Fig. 7 Measured filter wideband transmission and reflection.
of 13 dB, matching device simulation. Compared with SoA
low-loss acoustic filters (Fig. 1), this work shows significant
thickness variation across the sample. A full width at half frequency scaling and FBW enhancement. The reduced OoB
maximum (FWHM) of 200 arcsec from the rocking curve is performance is a drawback of using a low order filter with only
slightly worse than that with the sapphire substrate (60 arcsec 3 resonators, and will be improved in future works.
in [24]), but significantly improved from that without a-Si [28], Finally, filter response at different power levels is
corroborating the stack choice. characterized. The device is measured using the same VNA at
The fabrication process starts by trimming down the LiNbO3 several power level intervals between − 10 to 8 dBm (maximum
layer to 90 nm (the thickness of the shunt resonator) over the available power), showing little difference in the transmission
entire surface of a 2.1 by 1.9 cm sample. This is accomplished (Fig. 8). We suspect thermal nonlinearity will be the dominant
using ion beam-assisted argon gas cluster trimming, which is factor for such thin-film devices if larger input powers are
reported to maintain surface roughness and high crystallinity applied [30] . Further study on linearity and power handling will
[29]. The trim process using ion-beam has been precisely be studied in future works.
characterized in-house, validated by atomic force microscope
(AFM). Next, release windows are defined and etched using the IV. CONCLUSION
ion beam. Since the resonator bank dimensions are large, We report the design and implementation of a 23.5 GHz
resonators are divided into multiple subsections for easier acoustic filter with a low IL of 2.38 dB and a 3-dB FBW of
release. Moreover, small release windows at the end of the 18.2%, using 100 nm LiNbO3 on Si with an intermediate
IDT’s help confine acoustic energy and slightly improve amorphous Si layer. The device has been tested under different
performance. Afterward, another trimming to 75nm is power conditions showing good linear behavior.
performed over selected regions for series resonators, providing The filter performance significantly surpasses SoA and
the required fs shift. Finally, metal electrodes are patterned, and highlights the possibility of scaling compact acoustic front-end
the resonators are released through xeon difluoride (XeF2) Si signal processing toward mmWave bands.
etch. Optical images of the fabricated stand-alone series and
shunt resonators and the filter are displayed in Fig. 5 (a), (b),
First Author et al.: Title 9

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