Abstract
This paper reports on the deposition of AlN and AlXSc1−XN films by pulse magnetron sputtering. The first part will focus on the AlXSc1−XN deposition process in comparison to the already established AlN process. The effect of doping AlN with Sc regarding piezoelectric and mechanical properties is presented. The films show the expected increase of piezoelectric properties as well as the softening of the material with higher Sc concentrations. Above a threshold concentration of around 40 % Sc in the AlXSc1−XN films, there exists a separation into two phases, an Al-rich and a Sc-rich wurtzite phase, which is shown by XRD. At Sc concentrations higher than 50 %, the films are not piezoelectric, as the films are composed primarily of the cubic ScN phase. The second main part of this paper evaluates the films for application in energy harvesting. Especially the Sc doping allows a significant increase in the energy generated in our test setup. Directly measuring the AC voltage at resonance depending on load resistance with base excitation of ±2.5 µm, 350 µW power have been generated under optimum conditions compared to 70 µW for pure AlN. For a more application oriented measuring setup, a standard and a SSHI-based (“Synchronised Switch Harvesting on Inductor”) AC/DC converter circuit have been tested. The SSHI interface showed a significant improvement to 180 % compared to the standard interface.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Akiyama M, Kamohara T, Kano K, Teshigahara A, Takeuchi Y, Kawahara N (2009a) Enhancement of piezoelectric response in scandium aluminum nitride alloy thin films prepared by dual reactive cosputtering. Adv Mater 21(5):593–596
Akiyama M, Kano K, Teshigahara A (2009b) Influence of growth temperature and scandium concentration on piezoelectric response of scandium aluminum nitride alloy thin films. Appl Phys Lett 95(3):162107
Akiyama M, Umeda K, Honda A, Nagase T (2013) Influence of scandium concentration on power generation figure of merit of scandium aluminum nitride thin films. Appl Phys Lett 102:021915. doi:10.1063/1.4788728
Barth S, Bartzsch H, Gloess D, Frach P, Herzog T, Walter S, Heuer H (2014) Sputter deposition of stress controlled piezoelectric AlN and AlScN films for ultrasonic and energy harvesting applications. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control 61(8):1329–1334
Bartzsch H, Gittner M, Gloess D, Frach P, Herzog T, Walter S, Heuer H (2011). Properties of piezoelectric AlN layers deposited by reactive pulse magnetron sputtering. In: Proceedings of 54th Annual Technical Conf. Society of Vacuum Coaters, pp. 370–375
Frach P, Gottfried C, Bartzsch H, Goedicke K (1997) The double ring process module—A tool for stationary deposition of metals, insulators and reactive sputtered compounds. Surf Coat Tech 90(1–2):75–81
Guyomar D, Badel A, Lefeuvre E, Richard C (2005) Towards energy harvesting using active materials and conversion improvement by nonlinear processing. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control 52(4):584–595
Lefeuvre E, Badel A, Richard C, Petit L, Guyomar D (2006) A comparison between several vibrations-powered piezoelectric generators for standalone systems. Sens Actuators A 126:405–416
Oliver WC, Pharr GM (1992) An improved technique for determining hardness and elastic modulus using load and displacement sensing indention experiments. J Mater Res 7:1564
Ottman GK, Hofmann HF, Bhatt AC, Lesieutre GA (2002) Adaptive piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit for wireless remote power supply. IEEE Trans Power Electron 17(5):669–676
Tasnádi F, Alling B, Hoeglund C, Winqvist G, Birch J, Hultmann L, Abrikosov IA (2010) Origin of the anomalous piezoelectric response in wurtzite ScXAl1−XN alloys. Phys Rev Lett 104:137601
Teshigahara A, Hashimoto K, Akiyama M (2012). Scandium aluminum nitride : highly piezoelectric thin film for RF SAW devices in multi GHz range. In: Proceedings of IEEE international ultrasonics symposium 2012 1917–1921
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Barth, S., Bartzsch, H., Glöß, D. et al. Magnetron sputtering of piezoelectric AlN and AlScN thin films and their use in energy harvesting applications. Microsyst Technol 22, 1613–1617 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-015-2787-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-015-2787-x