Highly Oriented Growth of Piezoelectric Thin Films on Silicon Using Two-Dimensional Nanosheets as Growth Template Layer

Minh D Nguyen; Huiyu Yuan; Evert P Houwman; Matthijn Dekkers; Gertjan Koster; Johan E Ten Elshof; Guus Rijnders

doi:10.1021/acsami.6b09470

Highly Oriented Growth of Piezoelectric Thin Films on Silicon Using Two-Dimensional Nanosheets as Growth Template Layer

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2016 Nov 16;8(45):31120-31127. doi: 10.1021/acsami.6b09470. Epub 2016 Nov 2.

Authors

Minh D Nguyen^{1

2

3}, Huiyu Yuan¹, Evert P Houwman¹, Matthijn Dekkers², Gertjan Koster¹, Johan E Ten Elshof¹, Guus Rijnders¹

Affiliations

¹ MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente , P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
² Solmates B.V., Drienerlolaan 5, 7522NB Enschede, The Netherlands.
³ International Training Institute for Materials Science, Hanoi University of Science and Technology , Dai Co Viet 1, Hanoi 10000, Vietnam.

PMID: 27782380
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b09470

Abstract

Ca₂Nb₃O₁₀ (CNOns) and Ti_0.87O₂ (TiOns) metal oxide nanosheets (ns) are used as a buffer layer for epitaxial growth of piezoelectric capacitor stacks on Si and Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si (Pt/Si) substrates. Highly (001)- and (110)-oriented Pb(Zr_0.52Ti_0.48)O₃ (PZT) films are achieved by utilizing CNOns and TiOns, respectively. The piezoelectric capacitors are characterized by polarization and piezoelectric hysteresis loops and by fatigue measurements. The devices fabricated with SrRuO₃ top and bottom electrodes directly on nanosheets/Si have ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties well comparable with devices that use more conventional oxide buffer layers (stacks) such as YSZ, CeO₂/YSZ, or SrTiO₃ on Si. The devices grown on nanosheets/Pt/Si with Pt top electrodes show significantly improved polarization fatigue properties over those of similar devices grown directly on Pt/Si. The differences in properties are ascribed to differences in the crystalline structures and the density of the films. These results show a route toward the fabrication of single crystal piezoelectric thin films and devices with high quality, long-lifetime piezoelectric capacitor structures on nonperovskite and even noncrystalline substrates such as glass or polished metal surfaces.

Keywords: PZT thin films; microcantilevers; nanosheets; piezoMEMS; piezoelectric coefficients.