Science Letters:New solutions of shear waves in piezoelectric cubic crystals

Acoustic wave propagation in piezoelectric crystals of classes?43m and 23 is studied. The crystals Tl3VS4 and Tl3TaSe4 (43m) of the Chalcogenide family and the crystal Bi12TiO20 (23) possess strong piezoelectric effect. Because the surface Bleustein-Gulyaev waves cannot exist in piezoelectric cubic crystals, it was concluded that new solutions for shear-horizontal surface acoustic waves (SH-SAWs) are found in the monocrystals using different electrical boundary conditions such as electri- cally “short” and “open” free-surfaces for the unique [101] direction of wave propagation. For the crystal Tl3TaSe4 with coefficient of electromechanical coupling (CEMC) Ke2=e2/(C×g)～1/3, the phase velocity Vph for the new SH-SAWs can be calculated with the following formula: Vph=(Va+Vt)/2, where Vt is the speed of bulk SH-wave, Vt=Vt4(1+Ke2)1/2, Va=aKVt4, aK=2[Ke(1+Ke2)1/2-Ke2]1/2, and Vt4=(C44/ρ)1/2. It was found that the CEMC K2 evaluation for Tl3TaSe4 gave the value of K2=2(Vf–Vm)/Vf～0.047 (～4.7%), where Vf～848 m/s and Vm~828 m/s are the new-SAW velocities for the free and metallized surfaces, respectively. This high value of K2(Tl3TaSe4) is significantly greater than K2(Tl3VS4)～3% and about five times that of K2(Bi12TiO20).