Electrical conduction properties of sputter-grown (Ba, Sr)TiO3 thin films having IrO2 electrodes

The electrical conduction behavior of sputter-grown (Ba, Sr)TiO3(BST) thin films having IrO2 electrodes were studied under the assumption of a fully accumulated film. In the film-thickness range studied (40-80 nm), the dielectric constants and their electric field dependencies were found to be independent of the film thickness. Contrary to similar BST films grown on Pt electrodes, the leakage current density decreased with increasing film thickness at a given field. The phenomena were explained from the electric-field depression effect inside the film due to the accumulated negative space charges in the films. The leakage current conductions were controlled by the Poole-Frenkel mechanism in the low field whereas it changed to thermionic field emission in the high-field region. The dielectric constant obtained from the Poole-Frenkel fitting was approximately 300, which was in a qualitative agreement with the value obtained from the low-frequency capacitance measurement. The calculated interfacial potential-barrier height at zero volt and effective mass of electrons were 1.03 eV and 0.06m(0), respectively, from the thermionic field emission fittings. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)01112-8].