Abstract
Film deposition with RF sputtering to control residual stress in aluminum nitride (AlN) thin films has been investigated to fabricate the bimorph actuator for a piezoelectric tunable capacitor with low-voltage operation. The effects of conditions in sputtering and surface cleaning were studied both to obtain a preferable film orientation for piezoelectric actuation and to suppress structural deformation of the cantilever due to the residual stress in films. Microscopic analysis revealed that (0001)-oriented AlN and (111)-oriented Al films were epitaxially grown at each interface in the bimorph structure. The current–voltage (I–V) measurements showed a leakage current of less than 5 ×10-5 A m-2 in 500-nm thick AlN films up to 30 V. The effect of optimization of process parameters was demonstrated by the capacitance–voltage (C–V) characteristics of the folded-beam tunable capacitor, in which the suppression of residual stress in piezoelectric layers was shown to be effective to obtain low-voltage operation.
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