Fabrication and Characterization of doped thin film PZT

Abstract: MEMS structures utilizing the piezoelectric effect are used to fabricate a wide variation of sensingand actuating devices. The most common piezoelectric material for MEMS is PZT which has beenintensively investigated. In order to improve the performance of PZT and create materialsoptimized for specific applications, altered versions of PZT are being investigated. One way toalter the behavior of PZT is to introduce dopants. In this work, doped and non-doped PZT filmshave been fabricated using the sol-gel deposition process and the transverse piezoelectriccoefficient (e31) value of these films has been measured. Two types of dopants have been used tosee if these dopants could boost the e31 making the film more suitable for energy harvestingapplications. Furthermore processes alteration has been performed to increase the quality andthroughput of the PZT film fabricated at Silex Microsystems. The quality of the film could be seenby inspecting the level of non-uniform areas in regards to color and clarity of the film. The qualitywas improved and the color and clarity uniformity across the wafer was visibly improved. Thethroughput of the PZT deposition process was increased by ~33% by finding an alternative processrequiring fewer crystallization steps. One type of dopant gives an e31 increase of ~12% compared to the highest e31 value previously obtained at Silex Microsystems using non-doped PZT.