New directions in piezoelectric phononic integrated circuits: exploiting field confinement (SOUNDMASTER)

压电声子集成电路的新方向：利用场限制（SOUNDMASTER）

• 批准号: EP/Z000688/1
• 负责人: Krishna Coimbatore Balram
• 金额: $ 266.88万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FZ000688%2F1
• 关键词: New; directions; piezoelectric; phononic; integrated

The analogy between manipulating light and gigahertz (GHz) frequency acoustic waves in chip-scale platforms has been extensively explored, with ideas from silicon photonics, mainly strong geometric confinement and routing, being applied to acoustic waves to develop phononic integrated circuits (PnICs). It is important to note that while the light-sound analogy is generally applied to the strain field, acoustic waves in piezoelectric materials have a co-propagating electromagnetic (EM) field as well. This EM field, which oscillates at GHz frequencies, but is confined to acoustic wavelengths (~10^5 smaller), underpins the dominance of piezoelectric resonators and filters in radio frequency (RF) devices. Despite the advances made in PnICs in the past decade, the majority of piezoelectric devices, both bulk and surface wave based, still rely on weak transverse confinement and manipulation of quasi plane acoustic waves.This project seeks to answer the question: if one could actively control and manipulate these co-propagating EM fields in waveguide geometries with strong transverse confinement, what qualitatively new sensing and information processing paradigms can one enable?We show that by exploiting strong field enhancement in a PnIC platform, one can design resonant magnetic near field generators for electron spin resonance experiments that can improve the spin detection sensitivity by ~10^7, down to the thermal noise limit. In addition, by engineering acousto-electric interactions in waveguide geometries, acoustic phase shifters and mode-selective, non-reciprocal amplifiers can be realized that exert active control on acoustic wave propagation, and push active passive device integration to its limit, enabling a new class of devices for RF signal processing. To ensure these devices perform as expected, we also address the important question: can we get GHz frequency acoustic waves into and out of micrometre-scale devices with near-unity efficiency?

在芯片级平台中操纵光和千兆赫(GHz)频率声波之间的类比已经被广泛探索，硅光子学的想法被应用到声波中，主要是强几何约束和路径选择，以开发声子集成电路(PnIC)。值得注意的是，虽然光-声类比通常应用于应变场，但压电材料中的声波也具有同向传播的电磁(EM)场。这种电磁场在GHz频率下振荡，但仅限于声学波长(~10^5小)，支持了压电谐振器和滤波器在射频设备中的主导地位。尽管在过去的十年里，PnIC取得了很大的进步，但大多数基于体波和表面波的压电器件仍然依赖于弱横向约束和准平面声波的操纵。本项目旨在回答这样一个问题：如果人们能够主动地控制和操纵具有强横向约束的波导几何结构中的这些同向传播的电磁场，那么可以实现哪些质的新的传感和信息处理范例？我们表明，通过利用PnIC平台的强场增强，人们可以设计用于电子自旋共振实验的共振磁近场发生器，可以将自旋探测灵敏度提高约10^7，直到热噪声极限。此外，通过在波导几何结构、声移相器和模式选择放大器中设计声电相互作用，可以实现对声波传播施加主动控制的非互易放大器，并将主动无源设备集成推向极限，从而实现了一种新型的射频信号处理设备。为了确保这些设备按预期运行，我们还解决了一个重要的问题：我们能否以接近单位的效率将GHz频率的声波传入和传出微米级的设备？