Pb (Zr,Ti) O3 (PZT) thin films were prepared on (111) Pt-coated Si substrates by a chemical solution deposition method using zirconyl heptanoate as zirconium source instead of commonly used zirconium alkoxides. The effects of processing conditions on the microstructure and electrical properties of the PZT thin films were investigated. The texture of the PZT thin films could be changed by selecting different heat-treatment methods. Orientation-dependent electrical properties, including dielectric constant, polarization, and coercive field, were examined. The randomly oriented PZT thin films annealed at 600C for 0.5h showed a well-defined ferroelectric hysteresis loop with a remanent polarization of 18mC/cm2 and a coercive field of 74kV/cm.

Ferroelectric (Bi,La) 4Ti3O12 (BLT) thin films with different Bi2O3 template layers were prepared on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by a chemical-solution deposition method. The BLT films with a thin Bi2O3 bottom layer and those with a thin Bi2O3 intermediate layer had a (117) preferentially oriented growth after annealing at 750°C, while those with a thin Bi2O3 upper layer and those without a Bi2O3 template layer exhibited a high c-axis orientation. The surface morphologies changed with different preferential orientations. The electrical measurements showed that the use of Bi2O3 template layers improved significantly the P–E hysteresis loops of BLT thin films. The remanent polarization (2Pr) and coercive field (Ec) values of BLT films without a Bi2O3 template layer, with a Bi2O3 upper layer, with a Bi2O3 bottom layer, and with a Bi2O3 intermediate layer annealed at 750°C were 10.8, 29.12, 26.17, and 19.67mC/cm2; 79.0, 74.5, 75.5, and 76.3kV/cm, respectively, at an applied electric field of 350 kV/cm. The dielectric constants and dissipation factors were 184, 303, 243, and 217; 0.036, 0.044, 0.039, and 0.039, respectively, at the frequency of 100 kHz, for these BLT films without a Bi2O3 template layer, with a Bi2O3 upper layer, with a Bi2O3 bottom layer, and with a Bi2O3 intermediate layer. All the capacitors with Bi2O3 template layers showed good polarization fatigue characteristics at least up to 331010 bipolar pulse cycles and excellent retention properties up to 33104s.

Homogeneous LaNiO3 thin films were grown on thermally oxidized silicon (SiO2/Si) substrates by a sol-gel technique, for the subsequent sol-gel deposition of (Pb, La) TiO3 thin films, under the assumption that the structural and compositional compatibility between ferroelectric films and bottom electrodes could lead to enhanced electrical properties of ferroelectric thin films. In this work, the LaNiO3 films served three functions: the first was used as bottom electrodes for the fabrication of integrated ferroelectric devices on Si due to their low resistivity; the second was used as a seeding layer, promoting perovskite phase formation due to their structural compatibility with ferroelectric films; and the third was to suppress the composition diffusion between ferroelectric films and bottom electrodes due to their composition compatibility. The experimental results demonstrated that (Pb, La) TiO3 films prepared on the LaNiO3/SiO2/Si substrates had excellent electrical properties. The dielectric constant and dielectric loss were 1468 and 0.033, respectively. The dielectric constant is rather high among the values reported for (Pb, La) TiO3 thin films. The remanent polarization and coercive field were 4.24mC/cm2 and 23.2kV/cm, respectively.

Compositionally graded (Pb, Ca) TiO3 thin films were prepared by a monoethanolamine-modified sol-gel technique on platinum-coated silicon substrates at the annealing temperature of 600

Bi, La 4Ti3O12(BLT)/Pb (Zr,Ti) O3(PZT)/(Bi,La) 4Ti3O12 trilayered ferroelectric thin films were epitaxially grown by pulsed laser deposition onto (001) SrTiO3 (STO) substrates with and without SrRuO3 (SRO) bottom electrodes. From x-ray pole figures and electron-diffraction patterns, the epitaxial relationships between BLT, PZT, SRO, and STO were identified to be BLT (001) PZT (001) SRO (001) SrTiO3 (001); BLT (110) PZT (100) SRO (100) SrTiO3 (100). Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy investigations revealed that 90