• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.88-92
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• 2003

In this paper, the characteristics of the ZnO films deposited on AI bottom electrode and the temperature effects on the ZnO film growth are presented along with the fabrication and their evaluation of the film bulk acoustic wave resonator (FBAR) devices. All the films used in this work were deposited using a radio-frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering technique. Growth characteristics of the ZnO films are shown to have a strong dependence on the deposition temperatures ranged from room temperature to 35$0^{\circ}C$ regardless of the RF power applied for sputtering the ZnO target. In addition, according to the growth characteristics of the distinguishably different micro-crystal structures and the degree of the c-axis preferred orientation, the deposition temperatures can be divided into 3 temperature regions and 2 critical temperatures in-between. Overall, the ZnO films deposited at/below 20$0^{\circ}C$ are seen to have columnar grains with a highly preferred c-axis orientation where the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of X-ray diffraction rocking curve is 14$^{\circ}$. Based on the experimental findings, several FBAR devices were fabricated and measured. As a result, the FBAR devices show return loss of ~19.5dB at resonant frequency of ~2.05GHz.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.905-909
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• 2007

Crystalline and micro-structural characteristics of ZnO thin films which were deposited on p-Si(100) with cooling naturally down of pre-heated substrate during RF magnetron sputter deposition, were investigated by XRD and SEM in this paper. The film which was prepared on the substrate which was pre-heated to $400^{\circ}C$ before deposition and then cooled naturally down during deposition, showed the most outstanding c-axis preferred orientation. The ZnO thin film having the best crystalline result were applied to SMR type FBAR device and resonance properties of the device were investigated by network analyzer. It showed that resonance frequency was 2.05 GHz, return loss was -30.64 dB, quality factor was 3169 and electromechanical coupling factor was 0.4 %. This deposition method would be very useful for application of surface acoustic wave filter or film bulk acoustic wave resonator.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.38 no.11
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• pp.980-986
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• 2001

Bragg reflector type FBAR was fabricated on the Si(100) substrate. We measured a frequency response of the resonator at 5.2 GHz and analyzed it by numerical calculation considering actual acoustic losses of each layer in the structure. We fabricated nine layer Bragg reflector of W-SiO$_2$pairs using r.f. sputtering method and fabricated AlN piezoelectric and Al electrodes using pulsed dc sputtering. The return loss(S$_{11}$) of the fabricated Bragg reflector type FBAR was 12 dB at 5.38 GHz and the series resonance frequency(f$_{s}$) was 5.376 GHz and the parallel resonance frequency(f$_{p}$) was 5.3865 GHz. Effective electro-mechanical coupling constant (K$_{eff{^2}}$) and Quality factors(Q$_{s}$), the Figures of Merit of the resonator, were about 0.48% and 411, respectively. We extracted acoustic parameters of AlN piezoelectric and reflection coefficient of the Bragg reflector by numerical calculation. We could know that material acoustic impedance and wave velocity of AlN piezoelectric decreased for intrinsic value and the electromechanical coupling constant(K$_2$) value was very low owing to the poor quality of the AlN piezoelectric. Reflection coefficient of Bragg reflector was 0.99966 and reflection band was very wide from 2.5 to 9.5 GHz.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.07c
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• pp.1414-1415
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• 2006

Air-gap type film bulk acoustic wave resonator device using ZnO for piezoelectric layer and sacrifice layer, deposited by RF magnetron sputter with various conditions, fabricated in this study. Also, membrane$(SiO_2)$ and top and bottom electrode(both Al) of piezoelectric layer deposited by RF magnetron sputter. Using micro electro mechanical systems(MEMS) technique, sacrifice layer removed and then air-gap formed. The results of each process checked by XRD, AFM, SEM to obtain good quality device.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.965-968
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• 2007

In this study we investigated the variation of the substrate temperatures using RF sputtering to identify the effect on the structure and electrical properties by c-axis orientation of ZnO thin film. ZnO thin films were prepared on Al/Si substrate. In our experimental results, ZnO thin film at $300^{\circ}C$ was well grown with (002) peak of ZnO thin film, the thin film showed the high resistivity with the value of $5.9{\times}10^7\;{\Omega}cm$ and the roughness with 27.06 nm. As increased the substrate temperatures, the grain size of ZnO thin films was increased. From these results, we could confirm the suitable substrate temperature of ZnO thin films for FBAR(film bulk acoustic resonator).

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.151-154
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• 2003

AlN/Al/SiO$_2$/Si thin films for application to FBAR(Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator) devices were prepared by FTS(Facing Targets sputtering system) apparatus which provides a stable discharge at low gas pressures and can deposit high quality thin films because of the substrate located apart from the plasma. The AlN thin films were deposited on a $SiO_2(1{\mu}m)/Si(100)$ substrate using an Al bottom electrode. The process parameters were fixed such as sputering power of 200W, working pressures of 1mTorr and AlN thin film thickness of 800nm, respectively and crytallographic characteristics of AlN thin films were investigated as a function of $N_2$ gas flow rate$[N_2/(N_2+Ar)]$. Thickness of AlN thin films were measured by $\alpha$-step, the crystallographic characteristics and c-axis preferred orientation were evaluated by XRD.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07c
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• pp.1523-1525
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• 2003

Due to the rapid development of wireless networking system, researches on the communication devices are mainly focus on microwave frequency devices such as filters, resonators, and phase shifters. Among them, Film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) has been paid extensive attentions for their high performance. In this research, ZnO thin films were deposited by RF-magnetron sputtering on Al/$SiO_2$/Si wafer and then crystalline properties and surface morphology were examined. To measure crystalline structure and surface morphology X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) were employed. It was showed that crystalline properties of ZnO thin films were strongly dependant on the deposition conditions. As increasing the deposition temperature and the deposition pressures, the peak intensities of ZnO(002) plane were increased until $300^{\circ}C$, then decreased rapidly. At the sputtering conditions of RF power of 213 W and working pressure of 15 m Torr, ZnO film had excellent c-axis orientation, surface morphology, and adhesion to the substrate. In conclusion we optimized smooth surface with very small grains as well as highly c-axis oriented ZnO film for FBAR applications.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.317-320
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• 2014

A balanced RF duplexer with low interference in an extremely narrow bandgap is proposed. The Long-Term Evolution band-7 duplexer should be designed to prevent the co-existence problem with the WiFi band, whose fractional bandgap corresponds to only 0.7%. By implementing a hybrid bulk acoustic wave (BAW) structure, the temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) value of the duplexer is successfully reduced and the suppressed interference for the narrow bandgap is performed. To achieve an RF duplexer with balanced Rx output topology, we also propose a novel balanced BAW Rx topology and RF circuit block. The novel balanced Rx filter is designed with both lattice- and ladder-type configurations to ensure excellent attenuation. The RF circuit block, which is located between the antenna and the Rx filter, is developed to simultaneously function as a balance-tounbalance transformer and a phase shift network. The size of the fabricated duplexer is as small as $2.0mm{\times}1.6mm$. The maximum insertion loss of the duplexer is as low as 2.4 dB in the Tx band, and the minimum attenuation in the WiFi band is as high as 36.8 dB. The TCF value is considerably lowered to $-16.9ppm/^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.41-54
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• 2002

In this study, we have analyzed the effects of the membrane layer and the bragg reflector layers on the resonance characteristics through comparing the characteristics of the membrane type FBAR (Film Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonator) and the one type bragg reflector layers with those of the ideal FBAR with top and bottom electrode contacting air by using equivalent circuit technique. It is assumed that ZnO is used for piezoelectric film, $SiO_2$ are used for membrane layer and low acoustic impedance layer, W are used for the high acoustic reflector layer and Al is used for the electrode. Each layer is considered to have a acoustic propagation loss. ABCD parameters are picked out and input impedance is calculated by converting 1-port equivalent circuit to simplified equivalent circuit that ABCD parameters are picked out possible. From the variation of resonance frequency due to the change of thickness of electrode layers, reflector layers and membrane layer it is confirmed that membrane layer and the reflector layer just under the electrode have the greatest effect on the variation of resonance frequency. From the variation of resonance properties, K and electrical Q with the number of layers, K is not much affected by the number of layers but electrical Q increases with the number of layers when the number of layers is less than seven. The electrical Q is saturated when the number of layers is large than six. The electrical Q is dependent of mechanical Q of reflector layers and membrane layer. Both ladder filter and SCF (Stacked Crystal Filters) show higher insertion loss and out-of-band rejection with the increase of the number of resonators. The insertion loss decreases with the increase of the number of reflector layers but the bandwidth is not much affected by the number of reflector layers. Ladder Filter and SCF with membrane layer show the spurious response due to spurious resonance properties. Ladder filter shows better skirt-selectivity characteristics in bandwidth but SCF shows better characteristics in insertion loss.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.24-25
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• 2006

In this paper, ZnO thin films were prepared on p-Si(100) by RF magnetron sputtering. Before the depostion, the substrates were pre-heated to 500, 400, 300, $200^{\circ}C$ or not. During the deposition, the substrates were cooled down naturally or kept and then the films were investigated by XRD(X-ray diffraction) and SEM (scanning micro scope). It is showed the most outstanding result that the film was prepared on the substrate were cooled from $400^{\circ}C$. When the substrate was cooled from a certain temperature during deposition, it could be improve the c-axis orientation and useful for application of SAW(surface acoustic wave) filter and FBAR(film bulk acoustic wave resonator) device.