Surface acoustic wave nebulization on nanocrystalline ZnO film

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) nebulization/atomization has been realised on thin ZnO film based SAW devices. The surface acoustic wave nebulization (SAWN) process has been observed to produce significant mist generation and ejected satellite droplets. By modifying the geometry of the interdigitated transducers to reduce the wavelengths from 400 μm to 120 μm, higher frequency SAWN has been achieved by increasing radio frequency driving frequencies from 11.8 MHz to 37.2 MHz, respectively. Compared with the commonly used LiNbO3 SAWN devices, ZnO film devices exhibit better thermal dissipation, and to date, they have shown no susceptibility to substrate failure during fabrication or operation. They also have the added advantage of the technology being suitable for direct integration with microsystems and integrated circuit microelectronics.