The crystallographic texture of PZT thin films has been proven to play a critical role in the electrical performance of PZT used in non-volatile FRAM. During both development and production of FRAM, PZT texture must be monitored to assure ferroelectric performance. A common method for monitoring texture is to use normalized intensities collected from X-ray diffraction 2-theta scans. Although this method can reveal thin film texture, it does not give a quantitative measure of the volume of textured and/or random material. In addition, this method can only be used to compare films with constant thickness since differences in X-ray absorption are not taken into account. A new method for calculating the volume fractions of textured and randomly oriented material in PZT thin films has been developed. This new method for calculating textured volume fractions still utilizes integrated intensities from 2-theta scans, but the calculations include corrections for film thickness and geometrical factors. The calculated volume fractions obtained from this new method of data analysis can be used directly for physical evaluation of PZT thin film ferroelectric performance.
