Fabrication and analysis of ZnO thin film bulk acoustic resonators

This study employs RF magnetron sputter technique to deposit high C-axis preferred orientation ZnO thin film on silicon substrate, which is then used as the piezoelectric thin film for a thin film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR). Electrical properties of the FBAR component were investigated by sputtering a ZnO thin film on various bottom electrode materials, as well as varying sputter power, sputter pressure, substrate temperature, argon and oxygen flow rate ratio, so that structural parameters of each layer were changed. The experimental results show that when sputter power is 200 W, sputter pressure is 10 mTorr, substrate temperature is 300 °C, and argon to oxygen ratio is 4:6, the ZnO thin film has high C-axis preferred orientation. The FBAR component made in this experiment show that different bottom electrode materials have great impact on components. In the experiment, the Pt bottom electrode resonant frequency was clearly lower than the Mo bottom electrode resonant frequency, because Pt has higher mass density and lower acoustic wave rate. The component resonant frequency will decrease as ZnO thin film thickness increases; when top electrode thickness is higher, its resonant frequency also drops, due to top electrode mass loading effect and increased acoustic wave path. Therefore, ZnO thin film and top/bottom electrode thickness can be fine-tuned according to the required resonant frequency.