Epitaxial growth and ferroelectric properties of Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3/SrRuO3 heterostructures on exact SrTiO3(0 0 1) substrates

High quality Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3/SrRuO3 (PZT/SRO) perovskite oxide heterostructures have been grown on polished as-received (0 0 1) SrTiO3 substrates without any further treatment by pulsed laser deposition. X-ray diffraction θ–2θ and ω scans showed that the heterostructures had good (0 0 l) out-of-plane orientation and crystalline quality with the full-width at half-maximum values of rocking curves of only 0.04° and 0.2° for the SRO and PZT films, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy observation confirmed the epitaxial nature of the heterostructures. The SRO films showed a periodic step-terrace topography structure with an atomically flat surface, indicating step-flow growth mode, while the PZT films grew by island growth mechanism. The polarization-electric field hysteresis measurement showed that the remnant polarization Pr and the coercive field Ec at 5 V were 42 μC/cm2 and 135 kV/cm, respectively.