Thin Film bulk acoustic wave devices have the advantages of low loss, low temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency, and high power handling. These excellent characteristics are suitable for the applications on high frequency communication systems. In this study, thin film bulk acoustic wave filters using the ladder-type filter and stacked crystal filter configurations were investigated. Platinum was chosen as the top and bottom electrodes. To improve the platinum adhesion on SiNx/SiO2/Si substrates, a seeding layer of titanium is used. Highly c-axis oriented piezoelectric zinc oxide thin films were deposited by two-step deposition method under room temperature. As resonant area decreases, the band rejection of ladder-type filter will increase. Because the resonant area decreased, the distance between signal and ground will increase the results in an increased insertion loss. On the other hand, stacked crystal filters have larger band rejection and less 3dB bandwidth, which are suitable for the application of narrow band filters.

In this study, T-ladder type thin film bulk acoustic wave filters had been fabricated based on thin film bulk acoustic wave resonators. The titanium (Ti) seeding layer and platinum (Pt) for bottom electrode were deposited on silicon substrates by a dual-gun DC sputtering system. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and the four-point probe method showed that the Pt bottom electrode deposited on the Ti seeding layer exhibited favorable characteristics, such as a surface roughness of 0.69 nm and a sheet resistance of 2.27 £[/¡¼. The ZnO piezoelectric film was deposited using the two-step deposition method by RF magnetron sputtering. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy, atom force microscopy and X-ray diffraction revealed that ZnO piezoelectric film exhibited excellent characteristics, such as a the high preferred c-axis orientation and a rigidly precise surface structure with surface roughness of 7.37 nm. The wet etching process is adopted to fabricate cavity of device. The concentration of 30 wt% KOH and etching temperature of 100 ¢J had been indicated appropriate for etching processes. Finally, the top electrodes of the devices are varied to approach the performances of device applications. The results showed the highest coupling coefficient (kt2) of FBAR device can be obtained using platinum top electrode. The high coupling coefficient of FBAR device is appropriate for wide passband filter. The annealing processes had been used in order to improve the characteristics of piezoelectric films. The stress of ZnO film has been improved from -1.656 Gpa to 0.611 Gpa through the annealing process. At the annealing temperature of 400¢J, the ZnO piezoelectric film exhibited excellent characteristics, such as a large grain size with smooth surface. The quality factor of FBAR device using ZnO film with 400¢J annealing was better than that without annealing. The optimal conditions of fabrication processes are adopted to fabricate top electrode, bottom electrode and piezoelectric film. The T-ladder type FBAR band pass filter was constructed by FBAR resonators. The frequency response is measured using an HP8720 network analyzer and a CASCADE probe station. The 3-dB bandwidth, insertion loss and band rejection of the T-ladder type thin film bulk acoustic wave filter are 79MHz, -3.5 dB and 8.4dB at 2,379MHz, respectively.

In this study, AlN films are deposited using reactive RF magnetron sputter on various bottom metals, such as Mo, Al and Pt. The orientation of piezoelectric AlN thin films on different bottom electrode materials are investigated. Moreover, the acoustic Bragg reflectors deposited by DC magnetron sputter are composed of alternating layers of high and low acoustic impedance materials. To improve the performance of the reflectors, rapid thermal anneal and deposition process control over roughness of the thin film are also investigated. The resonance characteristics are improved obviously by deposition process control over thin films. The roughness control is the key factor of good frequency responses of SMR. In addition, the more layer of the reflectors the better the frequency response we obtained. The frequency responses of SMR are slightly improved by rapid thermal annealing procsess. Although defects in the thin films would be eliminated, nevertheless the thin film roughness became worse after annealing. This phenomenon would limit the improvement of frequency responses.

Recently, there are great demands for RF band pass filters with smaller size/volume, lighter weight, and higher performance for advanced mobile/wireless communication system. However, fabricated RF filters using traditional lumped element, dielectric resonators, or surface acoustic wave¡]SAW¡^filters have difficulties in on-chip integration, power handling capability, and temperature compensation. Alternatively, thin-film bulk acoustic wave resonator¡]FBAR¡^filters are very suitable devices for MMIC¡¦s since they can be fabricated on Si or GaAs substrates at a lower magnitude than lumped elements or dielectric resonators, plus they have a much lower insertion loss and higher power handling capabilities than surface acoustic wave devices and full integration with other CMOS RF IC circuitry for realizing a goal of system on chip¡]SOC¡^. In their simplest form, practical FBARs consist of a sputtered piezoelectric thin film sandwiched between top and bottom electrodes onto which an electric field is then applied. An FBAR must have two acoustically reflecting surfaces in order to trap energy and produce resonating characteristics. For this purpose, the thin film bulk acoustic resonator has to be isolated acoustically from the substrate. In view of this, in order to obtain a high Q factor and reduce spurious responses, this paper proposed the air gap type resonator using the sacrificial layer etching. The thickness of the AlN thin film used for piezoelectric thin film of Air-gap FBAR is 1um. Pt/Ti with 3000Å/300Å thickness is used as the top and bottom electrode. The device has a resonance frequency of 1.2GHz, and S11-paparameter of -25dB is also obtained.

In this study, highly C-axis oriented AlN thin films stacked upon Al bottom electrode on Si and Glass substrate are deposited with Reactive RF magnetron sputtering Technique. Three different sputtering systems were utilized to evaluate the optimized growth parameters. Room temperature growth was applied to the all system. During thin film growing , the substrate bias condition, sputtering work pressure, sputtering power and the N2 concentration are those key parameters to be adjusted in order to gain smooth surface morphology and highly C-axis prefer orientation AlN thin films. The crystallography of the deposited films was analyzed by x-ray diffraction (XRD). Film surface morphology was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Meanwhile, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was adopted to observe the microstructure and determine the grain size of the film. The results of the XRD patterns showed that in a 17cm long sputtering working distance condition, the AlN (002) can be obtained and the peak intensity can be increased when the sputtering power was fixed meanwhile reduced the working pressure and applied the negative bias on the substrate. The surface morphology can be improved with long working sputtering distance. The micrography of the TEM reveals that there is a transition region between Al metal and AlN film. Fine column structures can be observed in the initial growth stage. The size of the grain increased as the film became thicker. Strong AlN (002) ring pattern was obtained from the region of the top of the film. It indicates that the AlN (002) will not appear till the thickness of the film reach the critical thickness.

The solidly mounted resonator (SMR) is constructed of a Bragg reflector and a piezoelectric layer AlN. In order to obtain an appropriate SMR for the high frequency communication applications and high sensitivity bio-sensor applications, the Bragg reflector, the AlN, and the loading effect have been investigated thoroughly. The thesis presents the influences of surface roughness of the Bragg reflector and materials¡¦ selection on the resonance characteristics of an SMR. Three combinations of thin films, AlN/Al, Mo/Ti, and Mo/SiO2, are adopted. Originally, an AlN/Al multi-layer is used as the Bragg reflector. The poor surface roughness of this Bragg reflector results in a poor SMR frequency response. To improve the surface roughness of Bragg reflectors, a Mo/Ti multi-layer with a similar coefficient of thermal expansion is adopted. By controlling deposition parameters, the surface roughness of the Bragg reflector is improved. Finally, a material combination of Mo/SiO2 with high acoustic impedance ratio of 4.7 is adopted. Better resonance characteristics of SMR are obtained. The experimental results show a distinct resonance phenomenon around 2.5 GHz and excellent noise restraint. Afterwards, a ¼£f mode SMR is experimentally realized. The selection of high and low acoustic impedance for the first layer beneath piezoelectric layer results in the ¼£f mode and ½ £f mode resonance configurations, respectively. The coupling coefficient Keff2 of 6.9% is obtained, which is in agreement with the theoretical analysis. Following, the theoretical analysis upon the dual mode frequency-shift was characterized, and a modified formula was carried out. The c-axis tilted angle of AlN was altered as well as the various mass loading on the SMR. Based on the experimental results, the dual resonance frequencies showed a nonlinear decreasing trend with a linear increase of the mass loading. Furthermore, the ratio of the longitudinal resonant frequency to the shear resonant frequency remained at a range around 1.76 despite the various c-axis tilted angles of AlN and gradual mass loading on the SMR. The electromechanical coupling coefficient, keff2, of the shear resonance rose with the increase of the c-axis tilted angle of AlN. However, the longitudinal resonance fades away with the AlN c-axis tilted angle, and the quality factor of the longitudinal resonance decreases. Finally, the dual mode resonances are improved by tilting the off-center substrates toward the sputtering source and successfully enhance the longitudinal resonance while preserve the shear resonance at the same time. Not only the shear resonance for the liquid-based sensing application, but also an outstanding longitudinal resonance could be obtained. The practicability of the dual-mode resonator is extended for the applications of high frequency wireless communication and high sensitivity bio-chemical sensors.

In this study, the ladder-type filters based on back-etched thin film bulk acoustic resonator (TFBAR) were fabricated with several patterns to investigate the influence on their frequency responses. The highly c-axis oriented ZnO films were deposited on silicon substrates by reactive RF magnetron sputtering. The optimal two-step deposition temperature for ZnO films is 100 ¢J, which is obtained by means of SEM AFM, and XRD analysis. According to the experimental results, it leads to good resonance responses as TFBAR filters are fabricated with the patterns of large resonance area, two stages and the ratio of shunt/series resonance area is equal to two. Herein, conventional thermal annealing (CTA) was adopted to improve the frequency responses of TFBAR filters. Because CTA treatment can release stress and improve surface roughness of ZnO and Pt films, it enhances the frequency responses of TFBAR filters. The optimal CTA treatment temperature for TFBAR filters is 400 ¢J. Finally, TFBAR filters show the good performances with insertion loss of -8.138 dB, band rejection of 10.9 dB and bandwidth of 37.125 MHz.

This dissertation discusses the design, simulation and characterization of process-compatible accelerometers and gyroscopes for the implementation of multi-degree-of-freedom (multi-DOF) systems. All components presented herein were designed to operate under the same vacuum-sealed environment to facilitate batch fabrication and wafer-level packaging (WLP), enabling the development of small form-factor single-die inertial measurement units (IMUs). The high-aspect-ratio poly and single-crystal silicon (HARPSS) process flow was used to co-fabricate the devices that compose the system, enabling the implementation ultra-narrow capacitive gaps (< 300 nm) in thick device-layer substrates (40 um). The presented gyroscopes were implemented as high-frequency BAW disk resonators operating in a mode-matched condition. A new technique to reduced dependencies on environmental stimuli such as temperature, vibration and shock was introduced. Novel decoupling springs were utilized to effectively isolate the gyros from their substrate, minimizing the effect that external sources of error have on offset and scale-factor. The substrate-decoupled (SD) BAW gyros were interfaced with a customized IC to achieve supreme random-vibration immunity (0.012 (deg/s)/g) and excellent rejection to shock (0.075 (deg/s)/g). With a scale factor of 800 uV/(deg/s), the complete SD-BAW gyro system attains a large full-scale range (2500 deg/s) with excellent linearity. The measured angle-random walk (ARW) of 0.36 deg/rthr and bias-instability of 10.5 deg/hr are dominated by the thermal and flicker noise of the IC, respectively. Additional measurements using external electronics show bias-instability values as low as 3.5 deg/hr. To implement the final monolithic multi-DOF IMU, accelerometers were carefully designed to operate in the same vacuum environment required for the gyroscopes. Narrow capacitive gaps were used to adjust the accelerometer squeeze-film damping (SFD) levels, preventing an under-damped response. Robust simulation techniques were developed using finite-element analysis (FEA) tools to extract accurate values of SFD, which were then match with measured results. Ultra-small single proof-mass tri-axial accelerometers with Brownian-noise as low as 30 ug/rtHz were interfaced with front-end electronics exhibiting scale-factor values in the order of 5 to 10 mV/g and cross-axis sensitivities of less than 3% before any electronic compensation.

This study describes the design and fabrication of dual-mode film bulk acoustic resonator (TFBAR) devices to construct wafer level T-ladder type filters. Reactive radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering method was used to deposit c-axis- tilted ZnO piezoelectric thin films. The piezoelectric ZnO thin films were deposited by a two-step method at room temperature with off-axis. In this investigation, off-axis distance was varied to determine the optimal growth parameters of the tilted piezoelectric thin film. The SEM and XRD analysis reveal that ZnO thin films deposited at off-axis distances of 35 mm yielded a highly textured and sufficiently-tilted ZnO piezoelectric layer for dual-mode TFBAR. Additionally, the ZnO piezoelectric layer with off-axis distances of 35 mm exhibited enhanced competitive growth, and had a c-axis-tilted angle of 5¢X. To explore the relationship between the c-axis-tilted angle and the dual-mode resonance frequency responses (fL and fS) of TFBAR, two TFBAR devices were fabricated with ZnO c-axis tilted at 4.4¢X and 5¢X, respectively. The TFBAR device with 5¢X-tilted ZnO layer exists shear and longitudinal resonant modes. The center-frequency of longitudinal resonant mode is 2.2 times that of the shear resonant mode. The longitudinal mode is suitable for designing as a communication receiver (Rx) device at WCDMA band. On the other hand, the shear mode of TFBAR is suitable for EGSM-900 band. To optimize the characteristics, the filter was annealed by CTA treatment in 400 ¢J. For the frequency responses of the longitudinal wave, the insertion loss was upgraded from -5.77 dB without annealing to -4.85 dB as annealed, the band rejection was reduced from 13.57 dB to 12.65 dB, the bandwidth was broaden from 69.69 MHz to 73.12 MHz. On the other hand, for the frequency responses of the shear wave, the insertion loss was upgraded from -9.94 dB to -8.21 dB, the band rejection was reduced from 13.74 dB to 13 dB, the bandwidth was decreased from 28.13 MHz to 28.12 MHz.

This dissertation investigates dissipation in microelectromechanical (MEMS) resonators via detailed analysis and modeling of the energy loss mechanisms and provides a framework toward creating resonant devices with ultra-low dissipation. Fundamental mechanisms underlying acoustic energy loss are explored, the results of which are applied to understanding the losses in resonant MEMS devices. Losses in the materials, which set the ultimate limits of the achievable quality factor of the devices, are examined. Other sources of loss, which are determined by the design of the resonator, are investigated and applied to example resonant MEMS structures. The most critical of these designable loss mechanisms are thermoelastic dissipation (TED) and support (or anchor) loss of acoustic energy through the attachment of the MEMS device to its external environment. The dissipation estimation framework enables prediction of the quality factor of a MEMS resonator, which were accurate within a factor of close to 2 for high-frequency bulk acoustic wave MEMS resonators, and represents a signficant step forward by closing one of the largest outstanding problems in MEMS devices: how to predict the quality factor for a given device. Dissipation mitigation approaches developed herein address the most critical dominant loss mechanisms identified using the framework outlined above. These approaches include design of 1D phononic crystals (PCs) and novel 3D MEMS structures to trap and isolate vibration energy away from the resonator anchors, optimization of resonator geometry to suppress thermoelastic dissipation, and analysis of required levels of surface polish to reduce surface dissipation. Phononic crystals can be used to manipulate the properties of materials. In the case of the 1D PC linear acoustic bandgap (LAB) structures developed here, this manipulation arises from the formation of frequency stop bands, or bandgapwhich convert silicon from a material capable of supporting acoustic waves to a material which rejects acoustic propagation at frequencies in the bandgap. The careful design of these LAB structures is demonstrated to be able to enhance the quality factor and insertion loss of MEMS resonators without significant detrimental effects on the overall device performance.