In-plane confinement and waveguiding of surface acoustic waves through line defects in pillars-based phononic crystal

We present a theoretical analysis of an in-plane confinement and a waveguiding of surface acoustic waves in pillars-based phononic crystal. The artificial crystal is made up of cylindrical pillars placed on a semi-infinite medium and arranged in a square array. With a well-chosen of the geometrical parameters, this pillars-based system can display two kinds of complete band gaps for guided waves propagating near the surface, a low frequency gap based on locally resonant mode of pillars as well as a higher frequency gap appearing at Bragg scattering regime. In addition, we demonstrate a waveguiding of surface acoustic wave inside an extended linear defect created by removing rows of pillars in the perfect crystal. We discuss the transmission and the polarization of such confined mode appearing in the higher frequency band gap. We highlight the strong similarity of such defect mode and the Rayleigh wave of free surface medium. An efficient finite element analysis is used to simulate the propagation of guided waves through silicon pillars on a silicon substrate. Copyright 2011 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. [doi: 10.1063/1.3675923]