The relationships between the material properties of piezo-electric thin films (such as ZnO and AlN) and the frequency response characteristics of film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) devices based on those films are examined. ZnO and AlN films are deposited by RF magnetron plasma reactive sputtering. Issues in film growth are focused on electric bias application, oxygen incorporation, and two-step deposition. The XRD spectra, AFM topographies, and SEM images measured from all the deposited films present the optimal condition for both ZnO and AlN films to have excellent piezo-electric properties. For ZnO films, excessive injection of oxygen deteriorates the crystal quality and increases the surface roughness. Applying negative d.c. bias during deposition contributes to the improvement of crystal quality of ZnO films as well as the enhancement of acoustic coupling capability of ZnO-based FBAR devices. By adopting the two-step method to deposit AlN films, the films reveal the highly (002)-preferred growth nature and the RMS surface roughness values are drastically reduced, which also leads to the remarkable improvement in the acoustic coupling coefficient of AlN-FBAR devices. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.