High-resolution acoustic field mapping of gigahertz phononic crystals with atomic force microscopy

On-chip technology based on acoustic waves is a strong asset in modern telecommunications, with the prospects of becoming a cornerstone of next-generation devices. In this context, mapping and manipulating acoustic waves through coherent scattering is pivotal for a nontrivial control of the flow of acoustic energy, which could consequently enable advanced information manipulation. To this end, here a technique for mapping acoustic fields is introduced and used for characterizing micrometric-sized phononic crystals defined in GaAs slabs and excited by gigahertz surface acoustic waves based on atomic force microscopy. It is shown that incoherent scattering excites a wide distribution of modes, which enables the mapping of the dispersion relation of the two-dimensional structures, while the phononic crystal symmetry directly correlates with coherent scattering effects. Enabling the use of acoustic atomic force microscopy and understanding the role of scattering are of paramount importance for the versatile use of gigahertz acoustic waves in technological applications, setting the baseline for advanced operations like hyperspectral filtering, beam steering, or spatial-division multiplexing