The field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) involves the fabrication and deployment of sensors, actuators, and resonators with dimensions in the µm range. Although only a few decades old, MEMS devices are quickly supplanting their macro-scale counterparts in a broad spectrum of application areas. This study focused investigates MEMS device prototypes from two disparate fields, acoustic emission and energy harvesting. Device structures utilizing ferroelectric films couple ambient vibrations to an energy harvester for energy storage, or to an acoustic emission device for event detection.

Highly optimized ferroelectric materials are required for these MEMS structures, so this study begins with the optimization of a variety of ferroelectric structures and types across the PbZrO₃:PbTiO₃:La ₂O₃ solid solution. Select epitaxial ferroelectric films are next fabricated into a cantilever bimorph and a conical micro-transducer. For each MEMS structure, analytic and finite element modeling (FEM) are utilized to determine an optimal geometry for synthesis by standard microfabrication techniques. Two processing routes are articulated for each structure. A laser lift-off/transfer method and a heterogeneous deposition/etching method are described for the fabrication of a cantilever bimorph prototype. A textured growth template method and a heterogeneous deposition/wet chemical etch method are utilized for the fabrication of the conical micro-transducer.

In addition to the creation of the MEMS prototypes, a method for creating thick (2-5µm) conformal epitaxial ferroelectric films on MgO, which could be utilized for a large variety of novel ferroelectric MEMS structures, is also described.