Surface acoustic wave (SAW) properties of proton-exchanged (PE) z-cut lithium niobate (LiNbO3) waveguides with silicon dioxide (SiO2) film layers were investigated using octanoic acid. The distribution of hydrogen measured by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) showed a step-like profile, which was assumed to be equal to the waveguide depth (d). The SiO2 film was deposited on z-cut LiNbO3 waveguide by radio frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering. We investigated the important parameters for the design of SAW devices such as phase velocity (Vp), insertion loss (IL) and temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) by a network analyzer using thin-film aluminum interdigital transducer electrodes on the upper SiO2 film surface. The experimental results showed that the Vp of SAW decreased slightly with the increase of h/lambda, where h was the thickness of SiO2 films and lambda was the wavelength. The IL of SAW increased with increased h/lambda. The TCF of SAW calculated from the frequency change of the output of SAW delay line showed an evident decrease with the increase of h/lambda. The TCF for PE z-cut LiNbO3 was measured to be about -54.72 ppm/degreees C at h/lambda = 0.08. It revealed that the SiO2 films could compensate and improve the temperature stability as compared with the TCF of SAW on PE samples without SiO2 film.
