Wavenumber domain analysis of surface acoustic wave scattering from localized gratings on layered piezoelectric substrate

•General FEM-based wavenumber domain analysis is used for SAW scattering analysis.•Sezawa mode scattering from localized gratings on layered structure is analyzed.•Scattering behavior is strongly dependent on frequency and termination conditions.•High reflectivity with suppressed mode conversion is obtained for ScAlN/3CSiC. This paper proposes a general finite element method (FEM)-based wavenumber domain analysis (WDA) to calculate scattering characteristics of surface acoustic wave (SAW) on arbitrary piezoelectric substrates. We add a damping loss mechanism (DLM) to the SAW injection port to avoid interferences from the incident and backscattered modes. After checking the validity of the proposed method, we calculate and study Sezawa mode scattering using a small number of electrodes on the ScAlN/3CSiC structure for demonstration. The frequency dependences of reflection and transmission coefficients and that of the power dissipation ratio for different termination conditions and electrode thicknesses are calculated. Also, the influence of base substrate materials and that of gratings on scattering parameters are explored. Investigation results demonstrate that high reflectivity with suppressed mode conversion can be obtained for the ScAlN-based layer structure if a base substrate with an extremely large velocity is used and if proper grating design is applied.