Investigation of Lead-free Potassium Niobate Thin Films on Silicon for Piezoelectric Transducers

KNbO
₃
thin films are explored with possible application as piezoelectric transducers. The films are grown by vacuum radiofrequency sputtering and their thickness, uniformity, composition and piezoelectric response are studied as a function of the sputtering voltage, sputtering pressure and plasma power. Single layer sensing structure with aluminum electrodes is fabricated. The relation between the deposition conditions and the structure capacity and piezoelectric voltage is established. The peak value of the generated voltage is 2.89 V and its effective value is
_~
483 mV.