IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO.

7, JULY 2007

967

A Micromachined Piezoelectric Ultrasonic Transducer Operating in d33 Mode Using Square Interdigital Electrodes
Chao Wang, Zheyao Wang, Tian-Ling Ren, Senior Member, IEEE, Yiping Zhu, Yi Yang, Xiaoming Wu, Haining Wang, Huajun Fang, and Litian Liu

AbstractThis paper presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) operating in d33 mode. A piezoelectric PZT thin lm is polarized along the in-plane direction using top square interdigital electrodes (IDEs), and the in-plane polarization and IDEs enable the pMUT to operate in d33 mode, which allows the PZT to convert the ultrasonic pressure-induced in-plane stresses into in-plane direction charges. The square IDEs fully exploit the stresses of the diaphragm to improve sensitivity and increase device capacitance, and the pMUT is optimized by varying the IDE dimensions rather than the thickness of the PZT lm. Theoretical and nite-element analyses are performed to optimize the diaphragm and the IDE dimensions in terms of resonance frequency and sensitivity, respectively. The ultrasonic directivity of the pMUTs with different packaging congurations is characterized, showing large ultrasound inlet areas benecial to ultrasonic applications requiring high directivity. Index TermsDirectivity, d33 mode, interdigital electrode (IDE), in-plane polarization, PZT, ultrasonic transducer.

I. INTRODUCTION

UE TO THE piezoelectricity, lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is capable of converting energies between mechanical and electrical domains mutually [1], [2], so PZT has been widely applied to microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to extend their functions leading to the realization of a wide variety of piezoelectric microsensors and microactuators [3][9]. Silicon micromachining techniques provide a new approach to develop ultrasonic transducers [10][15]. The advantages of micromachined ultrasonic transducers (MUTs) include the increased and accurately controlled resonance frequency and bandwidth for air-coupled transducers [16], and the possibility to fabricate large 1- or 2-D arrays that would offer excellent performance than conventional bulk ceramic counterparts [10],

Manuscript received October 18, 2006; revised January 8, 2007; accepted January 9, 2007. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 90407023, and 863 Program of China under Grant 2004AA404240. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Errol EerNisse. C. Wang was with the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. He is now with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA (e-mail: chaowang@ Princeton.edu). Z. Wang, T.-L. Ren, Y. Zhu, Y. Yang, X. Wu, H. Wang, H. Fang, and L. Liu are with the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: z.wang@tsinghua.edu.cn). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JSEN.2007.896562

[11]. In addition, the utilization of PZT enables piezoelectric MUTs (pMUTs) to be realized by constructing a simple laminated diaphragm, which avoids the DC-biased voltage that is needed in capacitive MUTs [17][21], facilitating the fabrication and improving the reliability. Most pMUTs employ a laminated diaphragm with a PZT thin lm sandwiched in-between two plate electrodes, and this conguration enables the PZT lm to be polarized through the thickness direction by applying a DC-voltage to the two electrodes. This polarization makes the transducer to operate in mode by converting the stresses in the main plane of the PZT lm that are induced by ultrasonic pressure into electrical charges collected by the two electrodes. Due to that the voltage sensitivity of a pMUT is roughly inversely proportional to the device capacitance, which in turn is inversely proportional to the PZT thickness, the sensitivity is rudimentarily linear with the PZT thickness. Therefore, thick PZT lms are needed for high sensitivity. However, as it is difcult to deposit PZT lms thicker than several micrometers without crack, the pMUTs mode suffer from low sensitivity. To address operating in this problem, transducers working in mode have been mode is achieved by fabricating proposed [22][26]. The interdigital electrodes (IDEs) on the top of PZT and polarizing the PZT by applying DC-voltage to the IDEs, so that the remaining polarization is parallel to the plane of the PZT lm. The in-plane polarization enables the PZT to convert in-plane stresses to charges collected by the IDEs. In addition to PZT thickness, the conguration and the dimension of the IDEs determine the device capacitance, such that it is feasible to mode pMUTs by varying the optimize the sensitivity of the IDEs to avoid the need of thick PZT lms. The stresses in the top surface of the PZT, which contributes dominantly to charges, change from tensile at the boundaries of the diaphragm to compressive at the central area [27]. As the has the same sign, the stress-inpiezoelectric coefcient duced electric charges at these two different areas have different signs, resulting in counteractive contribution to the sensitivity. To fully exploit the high stresses, this paper proposes mode pMUT which employs square IDEs surrounding a the inside boundaries of the diaphragm. The IDEs locate only on the area with either tensile or compressive stresses, where the stresses have the same sign. To facilitate the measurement of small IDE capacitance, multiple-nger square IDEs are used to increase the IDE capacitance. Theoretical and nite-element method (FEM) analyses are performed in this paper to optimize

1530-437X/$25.00 2007 IEEE

968

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2007

Fig. 2. A simplied model of in-plane polarized microsensor.

diaphragm and along the direction. In case that the lm thickness is much smaller than the interdigital electrode gap , the electric eld , the electric displacement , and the polarization vector between two adjacent ngers are roughly parallel to the main-plane and along the axis, whereas those under the ngers are radial. Therefore, the stresses in the axis lead to mode. charges in the axis, making the pMUT working in The piezoelectric constitutive equation is (1) axis, and where the subscript denotes the components in the is the piezoelectric coefcient of PZT. Due to the complexity of the IDE, the electric displacement in the PZT lm is neither homogeneous in magnitude nor in direction, as shown in Fig. 1(b). On condition that the thickness of the PZT lm is smaller than the nger gap, the vertical component of the electric displacement in the PZT beneath the electrode ngers contribute much less than the horizontal component of the electric displacement between two ngers. Thus, for simplication, the electric displacement in the PZT between adjacent electrode ngers are assumed homogeneous and parallel to the main plane, whereas the electric displacement beneath the electrodes is neglected and the potential in these regions is uniform, as shown in Fig. 2. As the electric eld dose exist beneath the electrodes of the IDE, the neglect of the capacitance underneath the electrodes makes the calculated capacitance smaller than the actual capacitance. The capacitance of the IDE can be calculated using Gevorgians model [29], which is, however, complicated and inconvenient. By simplication, the device capacitance can be calculated as a parallel plate capacitor by introducing an effective electrode area , which is dened as the equipotential area on which the electric eld vectors act perpendicularly. According equals the product of the total electrode to the denition, length and the PZT thickness , and the device capacitance is approximated by (2) where denotes the permittivity of PZT. The electrical charges induced on the electrodes can be obtained from the electric displacement and the effective electrode area (3) Consequently, the induced voltage is given by (4)

Fig. 1. Schematic structure of the in-plane polarized pMUT. (a) Top view and cross-sectional view. (b) Electric eld distribution.

the pMUT, and micromachining techniques are used to fabricate the pMUT. Detailed ultrasonic directivity of different packages is characterized, and comparison results are given for ultrasonic applications. II. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS The axes are dened following the IEEE Standard on Piezoelectricity [28], which requires the coordinate axis to be parallel to the crystallographic axis of PZT crystal, i.e., the polarization direction, to make the piezoelectric coefcient positive. Therefore, the axis is set to parallel to the PZT lm plane, the axis is perpendicular to the PZT lm plane, and the axis is thus determined by the right-handed coordinate rule. mode. Fig. 1(a) shows a generic pMUT operated in The transducer consists of a laminated square diaphragm , in which the PZT thin lm delayer acts as the functional posited on the supporting material, and Pt/Ti on the top of the PZT serves as the IDE. Square conguration is chosen instead of circular one due to KOH etching, which etches pyramidal cavities from wafer backside to form the thin diaphragm. The zirconia or titania [22], [23], [25], [26] acts as a barrier layer and replaces the Pt mode transducers to prevent Pb bottom plate electrode in from diffusion during annealing. The piezoelectricity is achieved by polarizing the PZT with a DC-voltage applied to the IDE, generating a complex electric eld and remaining polarization vectors, as shown in Fig. 1(b). When an external ultrasonic wave pressure is perpendicularly applied on the laminated diaphragm, stresses are induced in the PZT. As the lateral dimensions of the diaphragm is much greater than the thickness, the stresses are mainly parallel to the

WANG et al.: A MICROMACHINED PIEZOELECTRIC ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER OPERATING IN

MODE

969

TABLE I PARAMETERS OF THE DIAPHRAGM AND THE IDE

TABLE II PIEZOELECTRIC CONSTANTS AND STIFFNESS CONSTANTS FOR PZT [33]

TABLE III MATERIAL PARAMETERS USED IN MODELING

and energy stored in a capacitor

is (5)

It can be concluded from (4) that the voltage output and energy depends strongly on the electrode gap . As it is easier to change the electrode conguration than to deposit thick PZT mode provides more design exibility with respect to lms, is twice that optimization of the performance. Besides, as , the mode pMUTs are capable of achieving higher of sensitivity. Despite of the imperfection of the simplication, the resulting simplied model provides clear insight into the dependency of the transducer specications on the IDE dimensions, and it therefore can be used for FEM simulation. III. FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS Finite-element analysis has been extensively used to develop piezoelectric microdevices [9], [11], [30], [31], since strong coupling among multi-energy domains imposes great difculty for theoretical analysis. As the electric displacement in the PZT lm is stress dependent, the voltage output can be solved from (4) provided that the stress distribution in the PZT lm is known. The simplied model shown in Fig. 2 is used for nite-element analysis so that the stress distribution and, in turn, the changes of the sensitivity versus the IDE dimensions can be obtained. A. FEM Modeling laminated diaphragm is set A model of the up using ANSYS, and the solid model is transferred to nite-element model by mapped meshing. An external pressure of 1 Pa is applied on the top surface of the diaphragm. The dimensions of the diaphragm and the IDE are listed in Table I. Different element types are assigned for different materials. buffer layer is very thin, so SHELL41 element, The which is a 3-D element with in-plane stiffness, is assigned are almost isotropic, a 3-D element for it. Since Si and with isotropic properties SOLID45 is assigned for them. Two elements types are used for modeling the PZT lm, i.e., a 3-D coupled-eld solid element SOLID5 to model piezoelectricity

and an anisotropic solid element SOLID64 to model elasticity [32]. SOLID5 is assigned to the PZT between adjacent electrodes, which are well in-plane polarized and thus piezoelectric. Elastic SOLID64 is assigned to other PZT regions, including those beneath the electrodes and those unpolarized. The elastic PZT regions have the same material properties as the piezoelectric regions except for without piezoelectricity. The piezoelectric coefcients and the elastic compliances of PZT are listed in Table II, and the other material properties are listed in Table III. B. FEM Results To solve the stress distribution in the PZT lm, the static structural analysis is carried out using ANSYS. Fig. 3 shows the vertical displacement of the diaphragm. Although the diaphragm displaces downwards, it experiences different stresses in different areas. Fig. 4 shows the in-plane and the out-of-plane components of the stress. From Fig. 4(a), it can be seen that the in-plane components change from tensile at diaphragm boundaries to compressive at the central area. The relative small value of the out-of-plane components veries that it is reasonable to neglect the out-of-plane components. To obtain high sensitivity, or Si, should the thickness of the supporting layers, such as be carefully designed so that the PZT sit on above the neutral plane of the diaphragm to ensure identical stress polarity through the thickness of the PZT. To explore the boundaries between the tensile and compressive stress areas, the stresses along the midlines and diagonals on the top surface of the PZT lm are plotted in Fig. 5. The interfaces where the stress changes from negative to positive correspond to the stress boundaries. These boundaries form a small square with size of around 65% of the diaphragm. It can also be found that the maximum stress occurs at the diaphragm boundaries, in accordance with the electric eld distribution, as shown in Fig. 6. Since the PZT has the same piezoelectric coefcient over the whole diaphragm, the electric displacement and

970

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2007

Fig. 3. Vertical displacement of the laminated diaphragm.

Fig. 5. Stress distribution in the top surface of the PZT lm. (a) Along the midline. (b) Along the diagonal.

Fig. 4. Stress distributions in the laminated diaphragm. (a) In-plane component. (b) Out-of-plane component.

Fig. 6. Electric eld distribution in the PZT lm.

the induced charge change signs from positive in the area with tensile stress to negative in the area with compressive stress.

Therefore, the IDEs should be within the area with only tensile or compressive stress to avoid the counteraction of charge and the resulting decrease of sensitivity caused by electrodes

WANG et al.: A MICROMACHINED PIEZOELECTRIC ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER OPERATING IN

MODE

971

Fig. 8. Resonance frequency versus the diaphragm dimensions. (a) Diaphragm length. (b) Thickness of PZT lm.

Fig. 7. In-plane polarized sensor with square interdigital electrodes.

across both the areas. In addition, the symmetry of the stress to the orthogonal midlines implies that using square IDE instead of conventional comb IDE to surround the inside boundaries of the diaphragm could increase the device capacitance. Accordingly, a square IDE is adopted in the area with either pure tensile or compressive stress, as shown in Fig. 7. The conguration is optimized with respect to large device capacitance to reduce electric noise and obtain high sensitivity. The IDE in tensile stress area experiences larger stress and have a larger size than compressive stress area, further increasing the capacitance and the sensitivity. Besides the voltage sensitivity, the resonance frequency is another important consideration to pMUTs. The resonance frequency, calculated using ANSYS modal analysis, depends on the size and thickness of each layer of the diaphragm for given materials, and the IDE is neglected in modal analysis considering its small area and small thickness. Fig. 8 shows the changes of the resonance frequency versus the width of the diaphragm and the thickness of the PZT layer. Other parameters except for these variables are listed in Tables IIII. As expected, large diaphragm size and small thickness lead to low resonance frequency. The supporting layers such as or silicon, though not shown, change the frequency with the same manner as the PZT. Hence, the resonance frequency can be increased at the cost of low sensitivity by increasing layer thickness or decreasing layer dimensions.

Fig. 9. Fabrication process of in-plane polarized sensor. (a) Silicon wafer cleaning. (b) Silicon thermal oxidation and silicon nitride deposition. (c) Selective removal of SiO and Si N . (d) Backside silicon etching. (e) Si N and SiO removal. (f) Silicon thermal oxidation. (g) Backside SiO removal. (h) Titanium deposition and oxidation. (i) PZT thick lm deposition. (j) Top interdigital electrodes (IDE) deposition and patterning. (k) Backside silicon dry etching.

IV. FABRICATION PROCESS The pMUTs were fabricated using micromachining techniques; the main processes are shown in Fig. 9. The fabrication started from double-sided polished (100) silicon wafers with thermal dioxide and silicon nitride deposition. The silicon nitride on the backside was selectively removed using reactive ion etching (RIE), and the silicon dioxide was removed by

972

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2007

Fig. 10. (a) X-ray diffraction pattern of the 15-layer PZT lm. (b) SEM cross section of the 15-layer PZT lm.

buffered hydrouoric acid (BHF). Then, the silicon wafer was etched with KOH from the backside to form square cavities m silicon was left. After silicon wet etching, until all the silicon dioxide and silicon nitride were removed by hydrouoric acid. m thermal dioxide was grown on the wafer, and Then, 70 nm Ti was sputtered on , followed by annealing at 600 C and oxygen ambient for 3 h to oxide the titanium into titania. Afterward, a 15-layer lm was deposited by repetitive spin-coating and annealing. The PZT solution was spun at 3000 rpm for 30 s, pyrolyzed on a hotplate at 380 C for 10 min, and then annealed at 700 C in oxygen atmosphere. The Pb proportion in the PZT precursor is a little higher than the stoichiometry in the nal annealed lm to compensate the loss during annealing. After PZT deposition, 10 nm Ti and 150 nm Pt were sequentially sputtered on the PZT lm, and were patterned into square IDE conguration using liftoff technique. Finally, the remained silicon was etched away using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etcher to further improve the device sensitivity. m exThe pMUTs were polarized for 5 min with a 10 ternal DC-voltage applied on the IDE. Then, the pMUT dies were diced from the wafers, glued on a printed circuit board (PCB), and electrically connected with the circuits on the PCB with wire bonding. After that, the pMUT die together with the PCB was packaged in a metal cap with circular inlet holes to protect the dies and provide desired ultrasonic directivity features. The dimensions of the cap are 4 mm 6 mm, and the diameters of the circular holes are 0.9, 1.5, and 2.5 mm, respectively. A small outlet hole with a diameter of 0.2 mm is opened on the backside of the PCB to vent air in the rear of the package and eliminate the inuence of the airow. The X-ray diffraction of the PZT lm was measured using an X-ray diffractometer (Rigaku D/max-RB, Japan), and the pattern is shown in Fig. 10(a). The (100)/(200) orientations are the highest peaks, indicating the PZT lm is well crystallized and (100)/(200) preferred. Fig. 10(b) shows the SEM photo (JEOL JSM-6301F, Japan) of the cross section of the 15-layer PZT. The total thickness of the 15-layer PZT is about 1.8 m, i.e., 120 nm per layer. Although the thickness of each layer could be increased by using dense precursors, thick PZT lm is prone to crack during annealing because of residual stress. Fig. 11 shows

Fig. 11. Optical photo of the in-plane polarized pMUTs with square IDE and PMUTs with different packages.

the optical photo of a as-fabricated pMUT wafer and three packaged pMUTs with different packages. Since the diaphragm is very thin, it is transparent after the remaining 50 m silicon is removed. V. ULTRASONIC CHARACTERIZATION The resonant behaviors of the pMUTs were characterized using Agilent 4294A impedance/gain-phase analyzer. The top electrodes of the test pMUTs are in the central area of the diaphragm, where the stress is compressive, as shown in Fig. 7(b). Fig. 12 shows the measured results of the impedance, value, capacitance, and the phase angle versus the resonance frequency. The rst-order resonance frequency is 44 kHz, which is about twice the resonance frequency predicted by the FEM, as shown in Fig. 8. This deviation could be mainly attributed to the residual stress in the diaphragm. Due to the mismatch in the thermoelastic properties and lattice parameters between the deposited lms and the substrate, thermal residual stresses are induced in the lms during the cooling process [36]. The residual stresses cause the variations of the structure stiffness, and thus inuence both the devices sensitivity and the resonance frequency [37]. The ultrasonic response of the pMUTs is characterized using the testing system shown in Fig. 13. Ultrasonic sinusoidal signals are generated using a function generator and transmitted to a speaker, which emits ultrasonic waves and applied perpendicularly to the diaphragm of a pMUT 28.5 cm away from the speaker. The pMUT locates at the center of a revolving platform, which can rotate for 360 with a step of 5 . The voltage output

WANG et al.: A MICROMACHINED PIEZOELECTRIC ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER OPERATING IN

MODE

973

Fig. 12. Resonance characteristics of the pMUTs. (a) Measured frequency in 1 kHz 100 kHz. (b) Capacitance in-series and Q value (Cs-Q) at around 44 kHz. (c) Impedance magnitude and phase (Z ) at around 44 kHz.

Fig. 13. Testing system for ultrasonic directivity.

of the pMUT is displayed on an oscilloscope, and the magnitude is recorded by a dynamic signal analyzer (Agilent 35670A). After the measurement at the position where the pMUT directly faces the speaker is nished, the pMUT is rotated by an angle of 5 , and the measurement described above is repeated to obtain the ultrasonic response at the new position. By revolving

the pMUT for 360 with a step of 5 and repeating the measurement, the directivity pattern of the pMUT is obtained. The same measurement is performed for different pMUTs with different packages. Fig. 14 shows the directivity patterns of different pMUTs. The angles 0 and 180 in the polar coordinates correspond to the positions where the front side and the backside of the pMUT face the speaker, respectively. It can be found that packaging exerts great inuences on the directivity patterns. The pattern of a pMUT without package has multiple lobes at which the responses are comparatively stronger than other positions, as shown in Fig. 14(a). The main lobe appears at around 0 , and several side lobes are distributed at the angles of 100 , 180 , 240 , and 300 , respectively. For a pMUT sealed in a cap without holes, as shown in Fig. 14(b), the response at 0 is quite small, because the ultrasonic waves are mostly isolated by the cap when the pMUT faces the speaker. On the other hand, the response is obvious at 180 , which means the ultrasonic waves pass through the outlet hole on the PCB and act on the diaphragm from the backside. The directivity patterns depend strongly on the dimensions of the inlet holes. As shown in Fig. 14(c), when there is a small hole on the package, the lobe at angle 0 is the main lobe and becomes dominant as the diameter increases, as shown in Fig. 14(d) and (e). This can be expected because more ultrasonic energies reach the pMUT for large diameters, and even maintains when the pMUT rotates way from the direct facing position. This concludes that the ultrasonic energy reaching the pMUT does not change remarkably with rotation of the pMUT in a large angle range, which expands as the diameter of the inlet holes increases. The side lobe at 180 is also dependent on packages. When the backside of the pMUT faces the speaker and ultrasonic wave applies on the diaphragm from the backside via the outlet hole, the air sealed in the chamber between the diaphragm and the cap induces stress in the diaphragm. For completely sealed packages, the pressure that applied on the cap compresses the air sealed in the chamber and vibrates the diaphragm, and thus results in output. However, for the packages with a large inlet hole, the pressures those applies on the diaphragm via the outlet hole and via the inlet hole are balanced to some extent, because the air escapes the chamber via the inlet hole as the diaphragm vibrates. As a result, the stress induced in the diaphragm is not large, especially for large inlet holes. The directivity patterns depend on the area of the inlet holes, as shown in Fig. 14(f) and (g). The side lobes at 180 reduce with the increase of the inlet hole number. For one-hole package, the side lobe at 180 is still evident compared with the main lobe at 0 , and decrease rapidly to a negligible level for four-hole and six-hole packages. The reason responsible for the variation is as aforementioned, which is further conrmed by the similarity of the directivity patterns shown in Fig. 14(e) and (f), indicating that the area of the holes has critical inuence on the directivity patterns. The small difference in the patterns of the six-hole and the four-hole packages is due to that the size and the location of the holes are not identical. Since the main lobe at 0 is dominant for the package with large total area of holes, e.g., four-hole package or one-large-

974

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2007

Fig. 14. Directivity patterns of the pMUTs with different packages. (a) No cap. (b) No holes. (c) One hole with a diameter of 0.9 mm. (d) One hole with a diameter of 1.5 mm. (e) One hole with a diameter of 2.5 mm. (f) Four holes with a diameter of 0.9 mm. (g) Six holes with a diameter of 0.9 mm.

hole package, inlet holes with large areas are benecial to the applications to receive signals in a specic direction and suppress noise from other directions. Accordingly, pMUTs integrated into array congurations [14] can be used in handwriting recognition system [12], positioning reconstruction

system [10], and so on. For example, in handwriting recognition systems, two pMUTs are used to measure the distances between the pMUTs and a handheld speaker. Then, the position of the speaker, which is determined by the distances, are recorded and processed to recognize the handwriting as the speaker moves.

WANG et al.: A MICROMACHINED PIEZOELECTRIC ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER OPERATING IN

MODE

975

VI. CONCLUSION mode pMUT operating in mode has been develA diaphragm oped using a laminated structure. The PZT thin lm used as the sensing element was deposited using multiple repetitive sol-gel method, and polarized operation with top IDEs to obtain in-plane polarization and mode. The diaphragm was optimized by changing its dimensions to achieve the desired frequency, and the electrode conguration, e.g., the electrode gap, electrode length, and electrode width, were optimized to obtain high sensitivity. This avoids the thick PZT lm needed for high sensitivity and demonstrates mode pMUTs. The pMUTs were the design exibility of fabricated using silicon micromachining technology, and square IDEs were fabricated in the area with only either tensile or compressive stresses to ensure the sensitivity. Ultrasonic characterization was performed to obtain directivity patterns for different packages, and the measurement results show that the directivity patterns depend strongly on the number and the location of the inlet holes. Large area of inlet holes is benecial to array conguration of pMUTs for applications to receive signals in a specic direction and suppress noise from other directions. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Q. Zhangs help concerning PZT lm deposition, and wish to thank Prof. J. Han for her valuable suggestions in processing. They also acknowledge the reviewers for their constructive suggestions. REFERENCES
[1] P. Muralt, Ferroelectric thin lms for micro-sensors and actuators: A review, J. Micromech. Microeng., vol. 10, pp. 136146, 2000. [2] D. Damjanovic, P. Muralt, and N. Setter, Ferroelectric sensors, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 191206, 2001. [3] L. Du, G. Kwon, and F. Arai et al., Structure design of micro touch sensor array, Sens. Actuators A, vol. 107, pp. 713, 2003. [4] V. Ferrari, A. Ghisla, D. Marioli, and A. Taroni, Array of PZT pyroelectric thick-lm sensors for contactless measurement of XY position, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 212217, Apr., 2003. [5] G. M. Krishna and K. Rajanna, Tactile sensor based on piezoelectric resonance, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 691697, Oct. 2004. [6] M. Zhu, P. Kirby, and M. Y. Lim, Lagranges formalism for modeling of a triaxial microaccelerometer with piezoelectric thin-lm sensing, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 4, pp. 455463, Aug. 2004. [7] M. S. Weinberg, Working equations for piezoelectric actuators and sensors, IEEE J. Microelectromech. Syst., vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 529533, De. 1999. [8] Y. Nemirovsky, P. Muralt, and N. Setter et al., Design of a novel thin-lm piezoelectric accelerometer, Sens. Actuators A., vol. 56, pp. 239249, 1996. [9] L. P. Wang and R. A. Wolf, Jr. et al., Design, fabrication, and measurement of high-sensitivity piezoelectric microelectromechanical systems accelerometers, IEEE J. Microelectromech. Syst., vol. 12, pp. 433439, 2003. [10] K. Yamashita, L. Chansomphou, and H. Murakami et al., Ultrasonic micro array sensors using piezoelectric thin lms and resonant frequency tuning, Sens. Actuators A., vol. 114, pp. 147153, 2004. [11] P. Muralt, N. Ledermann, and A. Barzegar et al., Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers based on PZT thin lms, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 22762288, Dec. 2005. [12] Y. P. Zhu, T. L. Ren, and Y. Yang et al., Novel ferroelectrics-based micro-acoustic devices and their ultrasonic applications, in Proc. IEEE Int. Electron Dev. Meeting, 1513, 2004, pp. 5154. [13] Z. Wang, W. Zhu, and H. Zhu et al., Fabrication and characterization of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers with thick composite PZT lms, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 22892297, Dec. 2005.

[14] K. Yamashita, H. Katata, and M. Okuyama et al., Arrayed ultrasonic microsensors with high directivity for in-air use using PZT thin lm on silicon diaphragms, Sens. Actuators A, vol. 9798, pp. 302307, 2002. [15] J. J. Bernstein, S. L. Finberg, and K. Houston et al., Micromachined high frequency ferroelectric sonar transducers, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 960969, Sep. 1997. [16] M. Torndahl, M. Almqvist, and L. Wallman et al., Characterization and comparison of a cMUT versus a piezoelectric transducer for air applications, in Proc. IEEE Ultrason. Symp., 2002, pp. 9971000. [17] I. Ladabaum, X. C. Jin, and H. T. Soh et al., Surface micromachined capacitive ultrasonic transducers, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq Control, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 678690, May 1998. [18] A. S. Ergun, B. Temelkuran, and E. Ozbay et al., A new detection method for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Control, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 932942, Jul. 2001. [19] D. W. Schindel, D. A. Hutchins, and L. Zou et al., The design and characterization of micromachined air coupled capacitance transducers, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Control, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 4250, Jan. 1995. [20] A. G. Bashford, D. W. Schindel, and D. A. Hutchins, Micromachined ultrasonic capacitance transducers for immersion applications, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Control, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 367375, Mar. 1998. [21] O. Oralkan, A. S. Ergun, and J. A. Johnson et al., Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers: Next-generation arrays for acoustic imaging?, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, vol. 49, pp. 15961610, 2002. [22] B. Xu, R. G. Polcawich, and S. Trolier-McKinstry et al., Sensing characteristics of in-plane polarized lead zirconate titanate thin lms, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 75, pp. 41804182, 1999. [23] B. Xu, L. E. Cross, and J. J. Bernstein, Ferroelectric and antiferroelectric lms for microelectromechanical systems applications, Thin Solid Films, vol. 377378, pp. 712718, 2000. [24] S. J. Gross, Micromachined switches and cantilever actuators based on piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT), Ph.D. dissertation, The Pennsylvania State Univ., Philadelphia, PA, 2004. [25] E. Hong, S. V. Krishnaswamy, and C. B. Freidhoff et al., Micromachined piezoelectric diaphragms actuated by ring shaped interdigitated transducer electrodes, Sens. Actuators A, vol. 119, pp. 520526, 2005. [26] H. G. Yu, L. Zou, and K. Deng et al., Lead zirconate titanate MEMS accelerometer using interdigitated electrodes, Sens. Actuators A., vol. 107, pp. 2635, 2003. [27] K. Yamashita and M. Okuyama, Sensitivity improvement of diaphragm type ultrasonic sensors by complementary piezoelectric polarization, Sens. Actuators A., vol. 127, pp. 119122, 2006. [28] ANSI/IEEE Standard 176-1987 on piezoelectricity, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Contr., vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 717772, Sep. 1996. [29] S. S. Gevorgian, T. Martinsson, and P. L. J. Linnkr et al., CAD models for multilayered substrate interdigital capacitors, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory, vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 896904, Jun. 1996. [30] Q. M. Wang, Z. Yang, and F. Li et al., Analysis of thin lm piezoelectric microaccelerometer using analytical and nite element modeling, Sens. Actuat A, vol. 113, pp. 111, 2004. [31] H. L. Li, J. H. Hu, and H. L. Chan, Finite element analysis on piezoelectric ring transformer, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 12471254, Oct. 2004. [32] ANSYS I, ANSYS Release 8. 0 Documentation, 2003. [33] W. P. Mason and R. N. Thurston, Physical Acoustics: Principles and Methods. New York: Academic, 1964. [34] D. R. Lide, Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2003. [35] Titanium DioxideTitania. [Online]. Available: http://www.azom. com/details.asp?ArticleID=1179#_Background [36] L. Lian and N. R. Sottos, Stress effects in sol-gel derived ferroelectric thin lms, J. Appl. Phy., vol. 95, pp. 629634, 2004. [37] S. Lee, T. Tanaka, and K. Inoue et al., Stress inuences on the ultrasonic transducers, Sens. Actuators A, vol. 119, pp. 405411, 2005.

Chao Wang was born in China in 1981. He received the B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and the M.Sc degree from the Institute of Microelectronics both from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He is currently working towards the Ph.D. degree at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. His research interests are micro/nanosensors, micro and nanofabrication technologies, and biosensors.

976

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 7, JULY 2007

Zheyao Wang was born in China in 1972. He received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in mechatronics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995 and 2000, respectively. From 1995 to 2000, he was with the Department of Precision Instruments, Tsinghua University, where he developed digital force sensors using piezoelectric materials. From 2000 to 2002, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, where he worked on silicon micromachining for RF applications with a special focus on ferroelectric thin lms on silicon substrates. In 2002, he joined DIMES, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, as a Postdoctoral Researcher, and worked on silicon micromachined structures and components for 3-D packaging. He currently is an Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. His research interests include piezoelectric materials for microsensors, silicon micromachining techniques, MEMS, and biosensors.

Xiaoming Wu was born in China in 1973. He received the B.S. degree from the Department of Automatic Control, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 1994 and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Precision Instruments, Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 2002. He is currently a Research Assistant at Tsinghua University. His research interests are MEMS sensors and actuators, BioMEMS, and integrated ferroelectrics.

Haining Wang was born in China in 1978. She received the B.S. degree from the Department of Information Technology, Tianjian University, Tianjian, China, in 2001, and the M.S. degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2004.

Tian-Ling Ren (M02SM05) was born in Jinan, Shandong Province, China, in 1971. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Modern Applied Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1997. He is a Full Professor and Director of Micor/Nano Devices and Systems Division of the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University. He has published more than 150 papers and 20 patents. His present research is focused on novel micro/nano devices and systems, such as MEMS, nonvolatile memories, ferroelectric devices, and magnetic devices. Prof. Ren is an Academic Committee Member of the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE).

Huajun Fang was born in China in 1972. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2006. He is currently an Assistant Researcher at Tsinghua University. His research interests are in micro/nano devices and systems.

Yiping Zhu was born in China in 1981. He received the B.S. degree from the Department of Information and Control Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2002. He currently working towards the Ph.D. degree at the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include silicon-based ferroelectric materials and devices and microacoustic devices and systems.

Litian Liu was born in China in 1947. He received the B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1970. Since 1970, he has been working on the research and development of semiconductor devices and ICs. He is currently a Full Professor at the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University. He is the Vice Director of the Micro/ Nanometer Technology Research Center, Tsinghua University. He has authored or coauthored more than 150 technical papers on peer-reviewed journals. His research elds include MEMS, smart sensors, biochips, and novel semiconductor devices. Prof. Liu is also a Senior Member of the China Institute of Electronics (CIE).

Yi Yang was born in Shandong Province, China, in 1978. He received the B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2006. He is currently a Research Assistant at Tsinghua University. His research interests include silicon-based piezoelectric devices and microacoustic devices.