AlN piezoelectric films for sensing and actuation

Aluminum Nitride (AlN) is explored as a thin film material for piezoelectric MEMS applications. A pulse DC reactive sputtering technique is used to deposit the AlN thin films and process parameters are optimized to obtain good crystallinity and high c-axis orientation films. A CMOS compatible process is developed and employed to fabricate...

Enhancement of AlN Slender Piezoelectric Cantilevers Actuation by PECVD Silicon Nitride Coating

Actuation enhancement for AlN piezoelectric cantilevers is achieved by coating slender AlN beams with a thin PECVD silicon nitride (SiN) layer. Very good linearity and high deflection, up to 19 nm/V of actuation deflection for 200 ?m long cantilevers, at quasi-static mode, is obtained for a 500 nm SiN top layer. This value is three times larger...

Fabrication of AlN slender piezoelectric cantilevers for highspeed MEMS actuations

Very thin piezoelectric cantilevers based on AlN layers using titanium Ti thin film electrodes are fabricated and characterized. By optimizing the Ti sputtering parameters, a very low stress (156 MPa) layers stack with high crystallinity and strong (002) orientation of the AlN films is obtained. Finally, a simple fabrication process, fully CMOS...