In this work, all electroacoustic material parameters, i.e., the elastic, piezoelectric, and dielectric coefficients, as well as the mass density, were determined experimentally for wurtzite aluminum scandium nitride (Al1−xScxN) for a wide range of Sc concentrations of up to x = 0.32 from the same material source for the first time. Additionally, the mass density and piezoelectric coefficient were determined even up to x=0.42. Two sets of 1 μm-thick AlScN(0001) thin films were deposited on Si(001) using reactive pulsed-DC magnetron cosputtering. One set of thin films was used to determine the a- and c- lattice parameters and the effective relative dielectric coefficient ε33,f, using X-ray diffraction and capacitive measurements, respectively. Lattice parameters were then used to extract average internal parameter u, bond length, and bond angle, as well as mass density, as a function of Sc concentration. Density functional theory calculations were performed to provide the equilibrium lattice parameters a, c, and u, as well as the bond angle and the bond lengths for wurtzite-AlN and layered hexagonal-ScN. The second set of films was used to fabricate surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators with wavelengths λ from 2 up to 24 μm. The SAW dispersion in conjunction with finite element modeling fitting was used to extract the elastic stiffness as well as the piezoelectric coefficients. The overall evolution of the material parameters and the change of the crystal structure as a function of Sc concentration is discussed in order to provide a possible explanation of the observed behavior.

No abstract

Reactive pulsed DC magnetron co‐sputtering is used to grow piezoelectric aluminum nitride (AlN) and aluminum scandium nitride (AlScN) thin films on Si(001) substrates. By using grazing incidence X‐ray diffraction (GIXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), we investigate how the microstructure and the presence of misoriented grains affect the piezoelectric properties of the material. N2 concentration and target‐to‐substrate distance are finely tuned to achieve thin films without misoriented grains, resulting in Al0.87Sc0.13N thin films with low roughness, high degree of c‐axis orientation, homogenous polarity, and piezoelectric coefficient d33 = −12.3 pC/N.

Non-polar a-plane Al0.77Sc0.23N 112¯0 thin films were prepared by magnetron sputter epitaxy on r-plane Al2O3(11¯02) substrates. Different substrate off-cut angles were compared, and the off-cut angle of 3° resulted in the best structural quality of the AlScN layer. Structural characterization by x-ray diffraction confirmed that single phase, wurtzite-type, a-plane AlScN 112¯0, surface acoustic wave resonators were fabricated with wavelengths λ = 2–10 μm (central frequency up to 1.7 GHz) with two orthogonal in-plane propagation directions. A strong dependence of electromechanical coupling on the in-plane orientation was observed. Compared to conventional c-plane AlScN based resonators, an increase of 185–1000% in the effective electromechanical coupling was achieved with only a fractional decrease of  <10.5% in series resonance frequency.

No abstract