Efficient excitation of bulk and surface acoustic waves by laser light

We previously proposed a piezoelectric sensor configuration with an optical-access method and reported on simulation results. Two problems exist to the fabrication of such a sensor; one is developing a suitable optical-to-electric conversion technique, and the other is developing on optical measurement method for piezoelectric resonance. We examined the use of a Schottky-barrier photo diode (SBPD) for photoelectric conversion to excite piezoelectric vibration in the VHF region. We found that the photoelectric output of SBPD corresponds to the intensity of the modulated light. The excitation power of piezoelectric vibration is between to /spl mu/W (at 70 MHz) and 32 /spl mu/W (at 50 MHz). We report on an optical-to-electrical conversion method that uses on SBPD.