Investigations of Aluminum Nitride based piezoelectric MEMS

With the fast and continuous evolution of MEMS devices, scientists and engineers facing different challenges each day. They overcome these challenges, with new materials, new fabrication methods, and different physical concepts. Using new materials and new process technologies (which also lead to different material properties) and in addition the geometry dependent material properties, increases the uncertainty about the reliability of these MEMS devices. In this paper, an overview about the behavior and characteristics of piezoelectric MEMS actuators with Aluminum Nitride (AlN) as the piezoelectric material is presented. Hereby the AlN is deposited in a standard sputtering process. In this paper we show the mechanical behavior of the piezoelectric MEMS actuators as derived from FE simulations and their ongoing fatigue during operation.