Lead-based titanate ferroelectric thin films fabricated by a sol-gel technique

Because of its excellent ferroelectric properties including piezoelectricity, thermoelectricity and photoelectricity, the lead-based titanate ferroelectric thin films have been widely used in the high-tech fields such as microelectronics, optoelectronics, integrated optics and microelectro-mechanical system. As a significant technique in preparing thin films, the sol-gel method has achieved great success in preparing the lead-based titanate ferroelectric thin films. In this paper, the sol-gel fundamental, deposition process and the advantage of sol-gel technique in fabricating ferroelectric thin films were concluded. The materials selection, ferroelectric properties, application fields of lead titanate, lead calcium titanate, lead zirconate titanate, some other lead-based titanate thin films by sol-gel were reviewed, and the influencing factors on the properties of ferroelectric films were discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.