Characteristics of antiferroelectric PbZrO3 thin films

Antiferroelectric PbZrO3 thin films were synthesized on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by using reactive magnetron co-sputtering followed by rapid thermal annealing. At an annealing temperature of 700 degrees C, the PbZrO3 films exhibited a pure perovskite phase with improved crystallinity as evidenced by higher and,sharper (221) and (240) X-ray diffractometer peaks. From the scanning electron microscopy observations, the grains were found to have a columnar structure, and the average grain size was 0.3 - 0.5 mu m. An electric-field-forced transformation from the antiferroelectric phase to the ferroelectric phase was observed at room temperature and had a maximum polarization value of 41 mu C/cm(2). The average fields for exciting the ferroelectric state and that for reversing to the antiferroelectric state, as measured by charge versus voltage curves, were 357 kV/cm and 207 kV/cm, respectively. The dielectric constant was 196 with an associated dissipation factor of 0.043 at 100 kHz. The frequency-dependent response indicated no dispersion below 1 MHz. According to the fatigue measurement, the value of P* of the PbZrO3 film switched up to 10(9) cycles which was a decrease of about 15% compared to the value for a virgin film.