Surface acoustic wave

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Experimental image of surface acoustic waves on a crystal of tellurium oxide.[1]

A surface acoustic wave (SAW) is an acoustic wave traveling along the surface of a material exhibiting elasticity, with an amplitude that typically decays exponentially with depth into the substrate.

Discovery

SAWs were first explained in 1885 by Lord Rayleigh, who described the surface acoustic mode of propagation and predicted its properties in his classic paper.[2] Named after their discoverer, Rayleigh waves have a longitudinal and a vertical shear component that can couple with any media in contact with the surface. This coupling strongly affects the amplitude and velocity of the wave, allowing SAW sensors to directly sense mass and mechanical properties.

SAW devices

SAW devices use SAWs in electronic components to provide a number of different functions, including as delay lines, filters, correlators and DC to DC converters.

Application in electronic components

This kind of wave is commonly used in devices called SAW devices in electronic circuits. SAW devices are used as filters, oscillators and transformers, devices that are based on the transduction of acoustic waves. The transduction from electric energy to mechanical energy (in the form of SAWs) is accomplished by the use of piezoelectric materials.

Schematic picture of a typical SAW device design.

Electronic devices employing SAWs normally use one or more interdigital transducers (IDTs) to convert acoustic waves to electrical signals and vice versa by exploiting the piezoelectric effect of certain materials (quartz, lithium niobate, lithium tantalate, lanthanum gallium silicate, etc.).[3] These devices are fabricated by photolithography, the process used in the manufacture of silicon integrated circuits.

SAW filters are now used in mobile telephones, and provide significant advantages in performance, cost, and size over other filter technologies such as quartz crystals (based on bulk waves), LC filters, and waveguide filters.

Much research has been done in the last 20 years in the area of surface acoustic wave sensors.[4] Sensor applications include all areas of sensing (such as chemical, optical, thermal, pressure, acceleration, torque and biological). SAW sensors have seen relatively modest commercial success to date, but are commonly commercially available for some applications such as touchscreen displays.

SAW device applications in radio and television


SAW resonators are used in many of the same applications in which quartz crystals are used, because they can operate at higher frequency. They are often used in radio transmitters where tunability is not required. They are often used in applications such as garage door opener remote controls, short range radio frequency links for computer peripherals, and other devices where channelization is not required. Where a radio link might use several channels, quartz crystal oscillators are more commonly used to drive a phase locked loop. Since the resonant frequency of a SAW device is set by the mechanical properties of the crystal, it does not drift as much as a simple LC oscillator, where conditions such as capacitor performance and battery voltage will vary substantially with temperature and age.

SAW filters are also often used in radio receivers, as they can have accurately determined and narrow passbands. This is helpful in applications where a single antenna must be shared between a transmitter and a receiver operating at closely spaced frequencies. SAW filters are also frequently used in television receivers, for extracting subcarriers from the signal; until the analog switchoff, the extraction of digital audio subcarriers from the intermediate frequency strip of a television receiver or video recorder was one of the main markets for SAW filters. They are also often used in digital receivers, and are well suited to superhet applications. This is because the intermediate frequency signal is always at a fixed frequency after the local oscillator has been mixed with the received signal, and so a filter with a fixed frequency and high Q provides excellent removal of unwanted or interference signals.

In these applications, SAW filters are almost always used with a phase locked loop synthesized local oscillator, or a varicap driven oscillator.

SAW in geophysics

In seismology surface acoustic waves travelling along the Earth's surface play an important role, since they can be the most destructive type of seismic wave produced by earthquakes.[5]

SAW in microfluidics

In recent years, attention has been drawn to using SAWs to drive microfluidic actuation and a variety of processes. Owing to the mismatch of sound velocities in the SAW substrate and fluid, SAWs can be efficiently transferred into the fluid, to create significant inertial force and fluid velocities. This mechanism can be exploited to drive fluid actions such as pumping, mixing, jetting, as well as others.[6] To drive these processes there is a change of mode of the wave at the liquid substrate interface. In the substrate the SAW wave is a transverse wave and inside the droplet the wave becomes a longitudinal wave. [7] It is this longitudinal wave that creates the flow of fluid within the microfluidic droplet.

See also

External links and references

References

  1. ↑ Applied Solid State Physics Laboratory - Hokkaido University. Kino-ap.eng.hokudai.ac.jp (2013-11-28). Retrieved on 2013-12-09.
  2. ↑ Lord Rayleigh (1885). "On Waves Propagated along the Plane Surface of an Elastic Solid". Proc. London Math. Soc. s1-17 (1): 4–11. doi:10.1112/plms/s1-17.1.4. 
  3. ↑ Weigel, R.; Morgan, D.P.; Owens, J.M.; Ballato, A.; Lakin, K.M.; Hashimoto, K.; Ruppel, C.C.W. (2002). "Microwave acoustic materials, devices, and applications". IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Techniques 50 (3): 738–749. doi:10.1109/22.989958. 
  4. ↑ Benes, E.; Gröschl, M.; Seifert, F. (1998). "Comparison Between BAW and SAW Sensor Principles". IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferro. Freq. Control 45. doi:10.1109/FREQ.1997.638514. 
  5. ↑ Aki, Keiiti; Richards, Paul G. (1980). Quantitative seismology. Freeman. 
  6. ↑ Yeo, L.Y.; Friend, J.R. (March 2009). "Ultrafast microfluidics using surface acoustic waves". Biomicrofluidics 3 (1). doi:10.1063/1.3056040. PMC 2717600. PMID 19693383. 
  7. ↑ Sritharan, K.; Strobl, C.J.; Schneider, M.F.; Wixforth, A.; Guttenberg, Z. (2006). "Acoustic mixing at low Reynold’s numbers". Applied physics letters 88 (1): 054102. doi:10.1063/1.2171482. 
  8. ↑ Two-dimensional visualization of SAWs travelling over crystal surfaces: Sugawara, Y.; Wright, O.B.; Matsuda, O.; Takigahira, M.; Tanaka, Y.; Tamura, S.; Gusev, V.E. (2002). "Watching ripples on crystals". Phys. Rev. Lett. 88 (18): 185504. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.185504. 
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