Accurate characterization of SiO2 thin films using surface acoustic waves.

We have investigated the acoustic properties of silicon dioxide thin films. Therefore, we determined the phase velocity dispersion of LiNbO3 substrate covered with SiO2 deposited by a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and a physical vapor deposition (PVD) process using differential delay lines and laser ultrasonic method. The density p and the elastic constants (c11 and c44) can be extracted by fitting corresponding finite element simulations to the phase velocities within an accuracy of at least +4%. Additionally, we propose two methods to improve the accuracy of the phase velocity determination by dealing with film thickness variation of the PVD process.