Experimental measurement of the electroelastic effect in thickness-mode langasite resonators

The electroelastic effect describes the shift in resonant frequency that a resonator experiences as a result of the application of a dc electrical field. We report on experimental measurements of the electroelastic effect observed in fourteen plano-plano configuration thickness-mode langasite (La
₃
Ga
₅
SiO
₁₄
) resonators. The orientations of the fourteen samples provide a sufficient data set to extract all eight of the third-order piezoelectric constants of this material. The role of this type of measurement in determining third-order piezoelectric constants is discussed. We compare the experimentally observed behavior to that predicted when using the langasite material constants currently available in the literature.