High-temperature stable piezoelectric transducers using epitaxially grown electrodes

Piezoelectric resonators are of great importance for application in high-precision transducers. However, at elevated temperatures, the degradation of commonly used metal electrodes may affect the performance of oxide electrodes of piezoelectric transducers; with sufficiently high electrical conductivity they are expected to overcome this deficit. In the latter case, the stable operation of piezoelectric transducers could be further enhanced if the resonator and electrodes would consist of identical or at least very similar materials; thus, nearly monolithic resonators are created. The present work focuses on two major aspects: the growth of high-quality langasite (La3Ga5SiO14; LGS) and doped LGS thin-film electrode layers by pulsed laser ablation and the characterization of the developed resonator devices. To obtain epitaxial films of the correct stoichiometry, the deposition on heated substrates is performed in oxygen atmosphere in the range from 10(-3) to 10 Pa. Another requirement for adjusting the stoichiometry is an increased Ga content in the sputter targets with respect to LGS to account for Ga evaporation during film deposition. Additional doping with Sr increases the electrode film conductivity; thus combined with the use of low-conductivity single-crystalline catangasite (Ca3TaGa3Si2O14; CTGS) substrates the ratio between the electrical conductivities of the substrate and the film is increased, enabling the preparation of nearly monolithic resonators. The properties of these nearly monolithic resonators are characterized in the temperature range of 600 to 1000 degrees C and compared to those of CTGS resonator blanks without electrodes. Particular attention is paid to the reproducibility of resonator properties, the electrode orientation and the quality factor. The created nearly monolithic resonator demonstrates stable operation in the temperature range from 600 to 1000 degrees C.