Fabrication of Low-Residual-Stress AlN Thin Films and Their Application to Microgenerators for Vibration Energy Harvesting

For obtaining low residual stress, AlN thin films were prepared on Si substrates with diverse bottom electrode materials of Pt/Ti, Au/Cr, Al, and Ti by the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) deposition technology. Among them, AlN thin films deposited on the substrate with the Al bottom electrode demonstrated not only low residual stress but also high enough c-axis orientation, and thus they were utilized to fabricate microgenerators by the micromachining process for converting environmental vibration energy into electric energy. The AlN microgenerator had a resonant frequency of 1042.6 Hz and the output power was 1.42 µW at the vibration frequency and 1g acceleration.

[1]  Sang-Gook Kim,et al.  MEMS power generator with transverse mode thin film PZT , 2005 .

[2]  N. Hudak,et al.  Small-scale energy harvesting through thermoelectric, vibration, and radiofrequency power conversion , 2008 .

[3]  Y. V. Andel,et al.  Vibration energy harvesting with aluminum nitride-based piezoelectric devices , 2009 .

[4]  Tzu-Chien Hsu,et al.  Growth mechanism of reactively sputtered aluminum nitride thin films , 2002 .

[5]  H. Wikle,et al.  The design, fabrication and evaluation of a MEMS PZT cantilever with an integrated Si proof mass for vibration energy harvesting , 2008 .

[6]  K. Ono,et al.  A Few Techniques for Preparing Conductive Material Films for Sputtering-Type Electron Cyclotron Resonance Microwave Plasma , 1989 .

[7]  Beth L Pruitt,et al.  Aluminum nitride on titanium for CMOS compatible piezoelectric transducers , 2010, Journal of micromechanics and microengineering : structures, devices, and systems.

[8]  Ann Marie Sastry,et al.  Powering MEMS portable devices—a review of non-regenerative and regenerative power supply systems with special emphasis on piezoelectric energy harvesting systems , 2008 .

[9]  C. K. Lee,et al.  Piezoelectric MEMS generators fabricated with an aerosol deposition PZT thin film , 2009 .

[10]  Skandar Basrour,et al.  Integrated power harvesting system including a MEMS generator and a power management circuit , 2008 .

[11]  Henry A. Sodano,et al.  A review of power harvesting using piezoelectric materials (2003–2006) , 2007 .

[12]  Shih-Jeh Wu,et al.  Microstructural evolution and formation of highly c-axis-oriented aluminum nitride films by reactively magnetron sputtering deposition , 2005 .

[13]  J. Chyi,et al.  Epitaxial AlN Thin Film Surface Acoustic Wave Devices Prepared on GaN/Sapphire Using Low-Temperature Helicon Sputtering System , 2008 .

[14]  John C. Bravman,et al.  Stress relaxation of free-standing aluminum beams for microelectromechanical systems applications , 2000 .

[15]  E. Touchais,et al.  Electron cyclotron resonance plasma ion source for material depositions , 1998 .

[16]  Lu Dong,et al.  Fabrication and performance of MEMS-based piezoelectric power generator for vibration energy harvesting , 2006, Microelectron. J..

[17]  H. Oepen,et al.  Morphology and magnetic properties of ECR ion beam sputtered Co/Pt films , 2005 .

[18]  Oliver Ambacher,et al.  Piezoelectric properties of polycrystalline AlN thin films for MEMS application , 2006 .

[19]  J. Park,et al.  Modeling and Characterization of Piezoelectric $d_{33}$ -Mode MEMS Energy Harvester , 2010, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.