Fabrication of Aluminum Nitride Films by Reactive Pulse DC Magnetron Sputtering for Vibration Energy Harvester

Aluminum nitride (AlN) film as a piezoelectric material has been used widely, particularly in vibration energy harvester due to its unique and enhanced properties such as high temperature resistance and compatibility with CMOS processes. In this work, AlN film with (002) preferred orientation was prepared on silicon wafers by pulse DC reactive magnetron sputtering (RMS), and the properties such as peak intensity, full width at half maximum (FWHM) and surface morphology were investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The preferred orientation was found to be sensitive to deposition conditions such as gas flow rate, power, bottom electrodes materials and substrates temperature. The results shows that the intensity was 1.1×105 counts, the FWHM was 1.9owhen the temperature was 260°C. The film was used to fabricate the vibrated energy harvester successful and the power density reached about 3000uW/cm3 at the vibration frequency under 1g acceleration.