Experimental investigation on the effect of top electrode diameter in PZT thick films

We report the effect of top electrode diameter size in aerosol deposited Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 thick films (~ 10 μm-thick) with Pt top and bottom electrode. Dielectric and ferroelectric results showed that top electrode diameter of 0.5–1 mm provides reasonable performance with 1 mm being the most suitable dimension in wide range of AC electric field and frequency. The results were discussed based on the surface microstructure and Debye relaxation. The dielectric analysis showed that the properties variation was mainly due to average grain size and defect density. Debye relaxation modeling exhibited that the result is because of materials characteristic not measurement artifact. We believe the results of this study will find immediate application in design of aerosol deposition process.