A gaas phononic crystal with shallow noncylindrical holes

A square lattice of shallow, noncylindrical holes in GaAs is shown to act as a phononic crystal (PnC) reflector. The holes are produced by wet-etching a GaAs substrate using a citric acid:H₂O₂ etching procedure and a photolithographed array pattern. Although nonuniform and asymmetric etch rates limit the depth and shape of the phononic crystal holes, the matrix acts as a PnC, as demonstrated by insertion loss measurements together with interferometric imaging of surface acoustic waves propagating on the GaAs surface. The measured vertical displacement induced by surface phonons compares favorably with finite-difference time-domain simulations of a PnC with rounded-square holes.