Low-temperature fabrication of Ba1-xSrxTiO3 thin films with good dielectric properties on platinized silicon substrates

Ba0.7Sr0.3TiO3 (BST) thin films 500 nm in thickness were prepared on technologically desirable Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si(1 0 0) substrates by ion beam sputtering (IBS) and post-deposition annealing method. The effect of annealing temperature on the structural and dielectric properties of BST thin films was systematically investigated. A sharp transition in their tunable dielectric behaviours was observed in good agreement with the evolution of crystal structure from amorphous to crystalline phase. It was demonstrated that the perovskite phase could crystallize in BST films at a very low temperature, around 450 degrees C. The lowering of perovskite crystallization temperature in the BST films was explained in terms of the high energetic process nature of IBS technique. A high dielectric tunability of 42% at E (electric field intensity) = 500 kV/cm and a low loss tangent of 0.013 at zero bias were both obtained in the 450 degrees C-annealed film, thereby resulting in the highest figure-of-merit factor among all the different temperature annealed films. Moreover, the 450 degrees C-annealed film showed superior leakage current characteristics with a low leakage current density of about 10(-4) A/cm(2) at E = 800 kV/cm. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.