Fabrication of ferroelectric (Pb,Ba) TiO3 thin films by sol-gel technique and their characterization

Ferroelectric (Pb,Ba)TiO3 (PBT) thin films have been fabricated by sol-gel technique using a barium modified lead titanate sol synthesized from lead acetate tri-hydrate, barium acetate and titanium (iv) butoxide. PBT thin films were deposited on platinum coated silicon and fused quartz substrates by spin coating. The crystal structure and morphology of the films are strongly influenced by the heat treatment performed to form crystalline PBT films. The deposited films possess good compositional homogeneity and thickness uniformity. The dielectric constant and the dissipation factor measured at 1 kHz at room temperature are found to be 118 and 0.015. The remanent polarization and coercive field values are estimated to be 12 muC/cm(2) and 65 kV/cm from the hysteresis studies. The films possess a very low leakage current of similar to10(-7) A/cm(2) as measured from I-V characteristics. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.