Design, fabrication and performance of 2 GHz surface transverse wave resonators

The authors present results from 2-GHz surface-transverse-wave (STW) resonant devices fabricated with a linewidth of 0.6 μm which is considered to be the upper limit at which reproducible linewidths are obtained with conventional photolithography. Extended cavity single-mode STW resonators with an insertion loss of 10 dB and a record value of 3800 for unloaded Q, low-loss, low-Q resonators and two-pole resonator filters for voltage-controlled oscillators with a tuning range of up to 0.1% of the resonant frequency were designed, fabricated, and tested. The device was realized with the ZBA-21S electron beam lithography system, using a direct-write process. The device characteristics show that STWs are ideally suited for low-cost fabrication of high-performance resonant devices with insertion losses well below 10 dB at 2 GHz on temperature-stable quartz substrates