Epitaxial perovskite Bi2ZnTiO6 thin film with high tetragonality

We fabricated epitaxially (001)-oriented Bi2ZnTiO6 thin films on single-crystalline (100) SrTiO3 substrates with (001) SrRuO3 top electrodes by means of pulsed laser deposition. The Bi2ZnTiO6 thin film was of tetragonal structure and exhibited a c/a ratio of about 1.18, higher than that of PbTiO3 (1.06). Significantly, the Bi2ZnTiO6 thin film showed a high remnant polarization of 53 mu C/cm(2) (2P(r) similar to 106 mu C/cm(2)), which indicates high ferroelectricity suitable for applications such as ferroelectric random access memory. Atomic force microscopy showed that the Bi2ZnTiO6 thin film had flat and clear terrace patterns due to the layer-by-layer growth mode. Furthermore, piezoelectric force microscopy showed that the film had a stripe ferroelectric domain structure. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.