Sawyer-Tower hysteresis measurements on micron sized Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 capacitors

We have performed Sawyer-Tower hysteresis measurements on micron sized Pb(Zr,Ti)O-3 (PZT) capacitors prepared on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates and patterned with a focused ion beam. Owing to a numerical compensating technique, we show that the increase of both linear dielectric constant Er and maximum polarization P-max, when decreasing the size of the capacitors, is artificial and mainly due to the parasitic effect of the probing setup. Moreover, a suitable method is proposed to accurately determine and correct for the additional parasitic capacitance in parallel with the standard capacitor. Under these conditions, the dielectric and ferroelectric properties of micron sized PZT capacitors are found to be quite similar to those measured on a large contact, i.e., the device properties are area independent. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.