Characterization of lead zirconate titanate thin film deposition onto Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates

Lead zirconate titanate, (Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3PZT) thin films were deposited onto a Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate using radio frequency (r.f.) planar magnetron sputtering in this study. The deposited PZT thin films were almost amorphous before the annealing processes and developed a perovskite structure after the annealing process. If the annealing temperature was too low or annealing time too short, pyrochlore would form. However, if the annealing temperature was too high or annealing time too long, the thin film structure would degrade due to the volatilization of PbO. The significant finding in this experiment is that high quality perovskite PZT thin films on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates can be obtained by adjusting the annealing temperature to a range of 650 °C to 850 °C and annealing time to a range from 5 to 80 min. In this experiment, the optimal annealing condition was an annealing temperature of 650 °C and time of 20 min. The properties of PZT thin film annealed at 650 °C for 20 min were dielectric constant εr = 869, free dielectric constant εT33 = 893, piezoelectric constant d33 = 2.03 p m V-1 piezoelectric constant g33 = 2.57×10-4 V m N-1, remanent polarization P1 = 112.5 nC cm-2 and coercive field Ec = 0.061 kV cm-1.