Epitaxial piezoelectric thick film heterostructures on silicon

The significantly higher dielectric permittivity, piezoelectric coefficients and electromechanical coupling coefficients of single crystal relaxor ferroelectrics make them very attractive for medical ultrasound transducers and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) applications. The potential impact of thin-film relaxor ferroelectrics in integrated actuators and sensor on silicon has stimulated research on the growth and characterization of epitaxial piezoelectric thin films. We have fabricated heterostructures by (1) synthesizing optimally-oriented, epitaxial thin films of Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO 3 (PMN-PT) on miscut (001) Si wafers with epitaxial (001) SrTiO 3 template layers, where the single crystal form is known to have the giant piezoelectric response, and (2) nano-structuring to reduce the constraint imposed by the underlying silicon substrate. Up to now, the longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient (d33) values of PMN and PMN-PT thin films range from 50 to 200 pC/N have been reported, which are far inferior to the properties of bulk single crystals value (d33 ∼ 2000 pC/N). These might be attributed to substrate constraints, pyrochlore phases and other effects. Here, we have realized the giant d33 values by fabricating epitaxial PMN-PT thick films on silicon. When the PMN-PT film was subdivided into ∼1 mum2 capacitors by focused ion beam processing, a 4 mum thick film shows a low-field d33 of 800 pm/V that increases to over 1200 pm/V under bias, which is the highest d33 value ever realized on silicon substrates. These high piezo-reponse PMN-PT epitaxial heterostructures can be used for multilayered MEMS devices which function with low driving voltage, high frequency ultrasound transducer arrays for medical imaging, and capacitors for charge and energy storage. Since these PMN-PT films are epitaxially integrated with the silicon, they can make use of the well-developed fabrication process for patterning and micromachining of this large-area, cost-effective substrate. We believe the technology of heteroepitaxial growth and photolithographic processing to produce single crystal thick film ferroelectrics on single crystal metallic oxide electrodes is a significant step in improving medical ultrasound transducers and MEMS devices applications.