Low Cost, Contamination-Free, and Damage-Free Fabrication of PZT MEMS on SOI Substrate

This paper reports a generalised process flow for the fabrication of Lead Zirconate Titanate based Piezoelectric Micro Electromechanical System devices. The optimised process can be used to realise several devices with different 1-D and 2-D geometries on a single wafer. All the state-of-the-art fabrication methods introduce some damage to the active piezoelectric material. This damage entails the need for an additional step of recovery anneal in the fabrication process. Our process was designed and optimised to avoid any such damage to the PZT layer. Remnant polarisation and effective transverse piezoelectric coefficient (e31,f) were used as metrics to quantify the damage to the PZT layer. It is shown that our process does not damage the PZT thin film during the fabrication, and hence no recovery anneal is required. We observe a ~3x improvement in remnant polarisation and ~2x improvement in e31,f of PZT thin film compared to the PZT thin film subjected to our previous fabrication process. Moreover, the process explained here uses only wet chemical methods for patterning of contaminating agents (PZT and platinum), making it a cost-effective process.

Effect of hydrogen on true leakage current characteristics of (Pb,La)(Zr,Ti)O3 thin-film capacitors with Pt- or Ir-based top electrodes

The degradation behavior of polarization and leakage current characteristics of sol-gel-derived (Pb,La)(Zr,Ti)O3 (PLZT) thin films, with Pt, Ir, and IrO2 top electrodes, by annealing under a 4% H2/96% N2 atmosphere were investigated. The leakage current behaviors of Pt/PLZT/Pt and IrO2/PLZT/Pt capacitors annealed at 300 °C for 20 min in 4% H2 were well consistent with the space-charge-influenced injection model proposed. However, IrO2/PLZT/Pt capacitors recovered at 700 °C for 10 min in Ar ambient after hydrogen anneal were not consistent with the proposed model because a conducting phase of IrPb was formed between the top electrode and PLZT during the recovery anneal at 700 °C in Ar ambient and modified the Schottky barrier height. The true leakage current behavior of IrO2/PLZT/Pt capacitors recovered after hydrogen forming are similar to those of Ir/PLZT/Pt capacitors without the hydrogen-forming gas anneal. The P–E loops of Pt/PLZT/Pt and Ir/PLZT/Pt capacitors showed good recovery through recovery anneal after H2 treatment. However, IrO2/PLZT/Pt capacitors depended on the recovery anneal atmosphere (Ar or O2).