Highly tunable Mn-doped PZT thin films for integrated RF devices

Abstract

Modern RF systems have triggered an important and urgent demand for inexpensive voltage controlled capacitors used for a wide range of applications such as tunable antennas or low-noise voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO). Ferroelectric materials have received considerable interest for electrically tunable dielectrics due to their high dielectric constant and large dielectric nonlinearity under dc bias field. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics which have been under intense investigation for various industrial domains including micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), non-volatile memories, and high-k capacitors, are especially well-known candidate materials due to their unequalled ferroelectric properties and stability in device operating ranges. However, reported voltage tunability of PZT films is relatively low (~35%@4GHz) and remains insufficient for microwave tunable devices. Therefore, much attention has been focused on the PZT modification by adding a small amount of dopants. Shao et al., studied strontium-doped PZT (PSZT) thin films and achieved a tunability of 48% @1MHz. More recently, Hu et al. reported a tunability of 65%@10kHz for lanthanum-modified PZT (PLZT) films. In the presented study, effect of manganese (Mn) doping on electrical properties of PZT (PMZT) thin films has been investigated. Metal/insulator/metal (MIM) capacitors using PZT-based thin films and ruthenium (Ru) top electrodes were processed on platinized (Pt) silicon wafers by a sol gel method. Dielectric properties of PMZT thin films were studied by varying the dopant amount and compared to those of pure PZT layers. At this end, on-wafer electrical measurements were conducted with a particular attention on leakage current characterization and RF measurements under DC bias voltage. We have shown that leakage current density decreased from 6.5 μA/cm2 to 1 μA/cm2 at 850kV/cm by doping PZT with Mn. Observed conduction mechanisms will be discussed in detail in the full-length paper. Moreover, developed PZT-based thin films exhibit high dielectric strengths achieving 2.1MV/cm and outstanding tunability as high as 85% (~7:1) @1GHz at bias voltage of 20V. Thus, PMZT tunability is among the highest ones reported in the literature for PZT-derived thin films but also for other piezoelectric materials. Indeed, in comparison, the tunability of BST-based materials, typically studied for voltage tunable applications, does not exceed 5:1. These remarkable results indicate that Mn-doped PZT thin films are promising candidates for RF tunable capacitors.