Effect of Diameter on Longitudinal Displacement in Disk Shape 10-μm-thick Lead Zirconate Titanate Films

Abstract

AbstractMicro-machined piezoelectric film devices are usually fabricated onto substrates, so that the displacement response of the film is clamped with the substrate. To investigate the longitudinal displacement behavior of 10-μm-thick lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films deposited onto Si substrates, disk shape structures with diameters of 20 to 80-μm were fabricated by an reactive ion etching (RIE) process. The polarization-field (P-E) hysteresis curves did not show a remarkable difference with decreasing the PZT disk diameter. On the other hand, unipolar driven longitudinal displacement increased, and the amount of the displacement was saturated at a diameter of 30 and 20 μm. The AFM measured longitudinal piezoelectric constants, AFM d33, were estimated in the case of before poling and after poling at 100V for 10 min. The AFM d33 for the before and after poling process were 65 and 94 pm/V for 80-μm-diameter film disk, and 153 and 315 pm/V for 20-μm-diameter film disk, respectively. The value of poled AFM d33 for 20-μm-diameter film disk was comparable to bulk PZT ceramics. These results suggest that the decrease of the disk diameter reduces the Si substrate bending related with the clamping effect between the film and substrate, and facilitates domain reorientation in the poling process. It seems that the actual piezoelectric constant of films can be estimated from the longitudinal displacement when the ratio of the PZT disk diameter, d, to the PZT film thickness, t, shows d/t < 3 for 10-μm-thick PZT films.