Fabrication of a New Air-Gap FBAR on an Organic Sacrificial Layer through an Innovative Design Algorithm

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors claim of "a new method for designing thin-film acoustic wave 20 resonators able to consider the fabrication tolerances." is not described in details and need to be explained. Otherwise paper is okay.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

ms:  applsci-2079431

Fabrication of a new air-gap FBAR on an organic sacrificial layer through an innovative design algorithm

Authors: Giovanni Niro, Ilaria Marasco, Francesco Rizzi, Antonella D’Orazio, Marco Grande, Massimo De Vittorio

A. Overview

1. In this manuscript the authors report on the design and the fabrication of acoustic wave-resonators made of thin films.

2. The contents are expressed clearly; the manuscript organization could be improved.

3. It is written in reasonable English. Although, careful reading of the text is needed - several typos and grammar issues.

4. The authors have acknowledged recent related research.

5. As long as my knowledge, the work presented is original.

B. Detailed analysis.

Abstract – it must be re-written: state what is the issue, what you have done, how did you do it, the results and the novelty.

-Nothing is written about the specific materials used to fabricate the resonators.

1. Introduction: provides an interesting approach to the subject and there are up to date references

 - Do not use “we”  or  “our” in scientific paper.

- Line 81: is it minimum or maximum error?

- MEMS not defined

2. Materials and Methods

Do not separate paragraphs with bullets

-Line 155: not need to summarize each section (eg In this section, we report …..)

3. Results and Discussion

Almost no discussion is presented. This section must be improved and further comparison with the design parameters must be given.

C. Overall assessment

The design work presented here is interesting and has potential for further developments.

However, only few experimental results are presented, and no discussion is given.

In my opinion the manuscript must be rechecked after Major corrections.

D. Review Criteria

1. Scope of Journal

Rating: Medium

2. Novelty and Impact

Rating: Medium

3. Technical Content

Rating: Medium

4. Presentation Quality

Rating: Medium

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

1. Motivation and contribution of this paper are not clear.

2. Main difference with the existing works and main contribution of this paper are not presented clearly.

3. Review of the related works is not adequate. Reference list should be updated.

4. Contribution of this paper is limited due to a lack of useful analysis or discussion about the proposed technique.

5. Performance comparison with other works is also a main drawback of this paper.

6. This paper is not well-prepared. There are a lot of errors and typos. For example:

- Typos as presenting equations

- Equations are not referred appropriately

- References should be followed the journal template.  

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The study for new calibration curves is incomplete. The text describing very simple Eq. 1 is related to the top electrode mass and height (thickness?) but the equation contains only piezoelectric thickness and resonance frequency. The right calibration function depicted in Fig. 1 b is missing.

Please take more care about subscripts and symbols in the text - e. g. compare V_p in Eq. 1 and vp in the line below. 

What is a difference and why the proposed method is better than standard?

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

manuscript is okay and can be improved in term of error margin for different fabrication process. Overall, manuscript can be accepted.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

ms:  applsci-2079431  R1

Fabrication of a new air-gap FBAR on an organic sacrificial layer through an innovative design algorithm

Authors: Giovanni Niro, Ilaria Marasco, Francesco Rizzi, Antonella D’Orazio, Marco Grande, Massimo De Vittorio

A. Overview

1. In this manuscript the authors report on the design and the fabrication of acoustic wave-resonators made of thin films.

2. The contents are expressed clearly

3. It is written in reasonable English.

4. The authors have acknowledged recent related research.

5. As long as my knowledge, the work presented is original.

B. Overall assessment

This is a very interesting work.  The authors answered the reviewer’s questions and queries. In my opinion the work can be accepted for publication given that the authors made changes in the manuscript and improved it.

C. Review Criteria

1. Scope of Journal

Rating: Medium

2. Novelty and Impact

Rating: Medium

3. Technical Content

Rating: Medium

4. Presentation Quality

Rating: Medium

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments to the authors:

  The revised manuscript is more solid in technique and contribution, but the Reviewer still have some concerns as follows:

1. The authors should briefly introduce main contribution of this paper in Section 1.

2. There are two equations (6) in this paper

3. All the contents of Table 1 should be placed in page 6 or page 7

4. The sentence “Table 2: Comparison between this work (T.W.) and the state of the art” should be placed at page 8 (same page with the content of this table)

5. In Table 2: please correct “[R1]” by [1], etc.

6. The authors should add more results or more discussion or more analysis. The number of pages of the current manuscript is not enough for a full journal paper.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The paper seems to be better, however still there are problems with mathematical formulas and their descriptions inside the text. For example please compare line 144 with Equation (4) or h_i in Equation (4) and (5) etc.

In general the mathematical expressions should be written using italic fonts - the same inside formula and in the text description.

Author Response

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