RF Sputtering of ZnO (002) Thin Films on Top of 3C-SiC-on-Si (100) Substrates for Low Cost Piezoelectric Devices

Abstract

In this paper, we deposited c-axis oriented ZnO thin films on top of epitaxial 3C-SiC/Si (100) substrates using RF magnetron sputtering. We investigated the effect of O2/Ar ratio and the post-annealing temperature. The grazing angle incident x-ray diffraction results show that ZnO thin-films are highly oriented along the (002) crystalline direction between the O2/Ar ratio of 30% to 50%, at the post-annealing temperature of 600 ˚C in nitrogen environment. The recipe from this work can be used to develop low cost piezoelectric devices such as an energy harvester.