Preferred orientation controlling of PZT (52-48) thin films prepared by sol-gel process

This paper systematically studied the factors including Pb concentration of precursor, PT seeding layer and TiO2 and ZrO2 seeding layers, which influence greatly the crystal orientation of lead zirconate titanate (PZT, Zr/Ti=52/48) thin films fabricated by sol-gel process. We find that the PZT films deposited by precursor with 20% mole excess Pb displayed strong (1 1 1) preferred orientation, with 5% mole excess Pb showed a little (1 0 0) orientation and pyrochlore phase. PT seeding layer was found prompting the PZT films phase transformation with (1 1 0) preferred orientation. In addition, the results show that the TiO2 and ZrO2 seeding layers had totally different effects on the preferred orientation of PZT films. The films with TiO2 seeding layer were highly (1 1 1) oriented and exhibited better ferroeletric properties (remnant polarization Pr=14.2 μC cm−2, coercive field Ec=59.1 kV cm−1) than those of the films with ZrO2 seeding layer shown (1 0 0) orientation (Pr=7.4 μC cm−2, Ec=42.9 kV cm−1).