c-Axis oriented zinc oxide thin films were prepared by sol-gel process on fused quartz substrates. The structure, optical and electrical properties of ZnO films were investigated. Growth of the thin films strongly depends on heat-treatment conditions. The c-axis lattice constants of the thin films and the band gap are a little bigger than that of ZnO crystal. The differences between the thin film and crystal might be attributable to the grain boundaries and imperfections in thin films.

Epitaxial and oriented K(Tao0.65Nb0.35)O3 thin films were prepared by the sol-gei method, using metalorganic compounds. The thin films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED). The mechanism of orientation of the K (Ta0.65Nb0.35) O3 films is discussed.

Compositionally step-varied (Pb, Ca) TiO3 thin films were prepared on platinum-coated silicon substrates by a monoethanolamine-modified sol-gel technique. The dielectric constant and dissipation factor were found to be 342 and 0.019, respectively, for thin films of 0.6mm in thickness annealed at 550

We report abnormal ferroelectric properties of compositionally graded Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 thin films on LaNiO3-coated SiO2/Si substrates, where Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and LaNiO3 films were prepared by a metalorganic decomposition technique and a sol–gel technique, respectively. It was found that the hysteresis loops of the Pb (Zr,Ti) O3 graded films measured by the conventional Sawyer-Tower method shifted along the polarization axis, i.e., they showed polarization offsets when applied by an alternating electric field. The polarization offsets were 82.5mC/cm2 at 270kV/cm and 62.5mC/cm2 at 185kV/cm for the up-graded film and the down-graded film, respectively. The absolute magnitude of the polarization offsets was closely related to the magnitude of the driving electric field, and the direction of the polarization offsets depended on the direction of the composition gradient with respect to the substrate. Analysis indicated that the polarization offsets did not originate from asymmetric contact effects, oxygen vacancies, alignment of defect dipoles, and/or electron injection. These results showed that polarization offsets in hysteresis loops were the intrinsic characteristic of the compositionally graded Pb (Zr,Ti) O3 thin films.

Band-gap energies of sol-gel-derived SrTiO3 thin films were studied in terms of annealing temperature and film thickness. The band-gap energies of highly crystallized films were comparable to those of single crystals reported, whereas for poor-crystallized films, their band-gap energy values were much larger than those of single crystals. The larger band-gap energy shift was believed to be mainly due to both quantum size effect and existence of amorphous phase in thin films. The band-gap energies also showed a strong dependence on film thickness. There was a critical film thickness (～200 nm), above which the films had band-gap energies close to those of crystals or bulks, but below that, the values shifted largely, which can be attributed to the influence of crystallinity of thin films. Such a thickness effect of band-gap energy should be of high interest in optical device applications.