In this work we report on microstructures made of AlN for the use as piezoelectric microgenerators in energy harvesting applications. Experimental results on the mechanical and piezoelectrical properties of sputtered AlN thin films deposited on Si(001) substrates as well as results on vibrometry of fabricated microcantilevers are presented. It is shown that due to the constant d33 piezo coefficients of > 5 pm/V, AlN films are well suited for the integration in cantilever structures for powering of low-consumption sensor networks

Aluminum nitride thin films grown at low temperature (< 200°C) on Si(001) using radio frequency (RF) sputter deposition technique have been characterized by measuring infrared (IR) spectra, breakdown voltage, and crystallographic orientation. The full-width-at-half-maximum of the E1(TO) mode in the IR measurement has been found to decrease for higher RF power. The breakdown electric field strength under dc voltage is around 5 MV/cm. The X-ray diffraction measurements indicated negligible change in the tilt of the film crystallites following annealing for 1 h in vacuum at 1000°C. Cantilevers that can be used both as pressure/force or inertial sensors and actuators have been fabricated from our low-temperature grown, thermally stable films.

In this work we report on the mechanical and material properties of membranes made of AlN and nanodiamond for the use in tunable micro-optics. AlN membranes with and without metal contacts have been studied in dynamic mode by laser Doppler vibrometry

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