High power-durable and low loss single-crystalline Al/Ti electrodes for RF SAW devices

In order to improve the power-durability of the electrodes in a RF SAW device, single-crystalline Al/Ti films were successfully grown on 64/spl deg/Y-X LiNbO/sub 3/ substrates by the conventional electron-beam vapor deposition technique. It is clear that the insertion loss of RF SAW filters with the single-crystalline electrodes was lower by about 0.1 dB compared with those with polycrystalline Al electrodes. Moreover, the time to failure for the single-crystalline electrodes became approximately 700 times longer than that for Al-Cu alloy electrodes which have been widely used in high-power RF SAW devices.