We report a surface micromachining process for aluminum nitride (AlN) thin films to fabricate piezoelectric unimorph suspension devices for actuator applications. Polysilicon is used as a structural layer. Highly c-axis oriented AlN thin films 1 /spl mu/m thick are deposited by rf reactive sputtering. Thin layers of chromium on either side of the AIN are used as top and bottom electrodes and also used as a mask to etch the AlN layer. Scattering parameters are measured in fabricated samples using a vector network analyzer. Results show resonant frequencies of devices in the range of (1-2) GHz with an effective electromechanical coupling factor K2 eff = 1.7 %.
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