Nitrogen [N]-incorporated ZnO piezoelectric thin films and their application for ultra-small film bulk acoustic wave resonator device fabrication

Abstract

Nitrogen [N]-incorporated ZnO films with columnar grains of a preferred c-axis orientation were deposited on p-Si (100) wafers, using an RF magnetron sputter deposition technique. For the N incorporation into the ZnO films, an N(2)O gas was used as a doping source and also various process conditions such as N(2)O gas fraction and RF power were applied. Besides, some of the ZnO films were treated with the post annealing process. And then, the micro-structural characteristics of the N-incorporated ZnO films were investigated by a scanning electron microscope, an X-ray diffractometer, and an atomic force microscope techniques. Finally, employing the N-incorporated ZnO films, the solidly mounted resonator-type film bulk acoustic wave resonator devices were fabricated and their resonance characteristics were extracted. As a result, an excellent return loss (S(11)) of - 63 dB was observed at similar to 0.6 GHz, better than ever reported. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3641638]