Enhanced ferroelectric properties of multilayer SrBi2Ta2O9/SrBi2Nb2O9 thin films for NVRAM applications

Ferroelectric SrBi2Ta2O9/SrBi2Nb2O9 (SBT/SBN) multilayer thin films with various stacking periodicity were deposited on Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si substrate by pulsed laser deposition technique. The X-ray diffraction patterns indicated that the perovskite phase was fully formed with polycrystalline structure in all the films. The Raman spectra showed the frequency of the O–Ta–O stretching mode for multilayer and single layer SrBi2(Ta0.5Nb0.5)2O9 (SBNT) samples was ∼827–829 cm−1, which was in between the stretching mode frequency in SBT (∼813 cm−1) and SBN (∼834 cm−1) thin films. The dielectric constant was increased from 300 (SBT) to ∼373 at 100 kHz in the double layer SBT/SBN sample with thickness of each layer being ∼200 nm. The remanent polarization (2Pr) for this film was obtained ∼41.7 μC/cm2, which is much higher, compared to pure SBT film (∼19.2 μC/cm2). The coercive field of this double layer film (67 kV/cm) was found to be lower than SBN film (98 kV/cm).