Morphological and electrical investigations of lead zirconium titanate thin films processed at low temperature by a novel sol-gel system

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films prepared from a new chelate-based precursor solution were dip-coated onto ITO-coated glass substrates. ITO has been chosen to preserve the transparency necessary for the specific applications. The effects of chemistry and processing conditions are explored in solution-derived morphotropic composition PZT films. The PZT transformed directly from the amorphous phase into perovskite, without going through a pyrochlore intermediate stage. The PZT phase crystallized at significantly low temperature of 450 °C following conventional heat-treatment without necessitating special irradiations, rapid thermal annealing and/or particular substrates. Ferroelectric and dielectric properties were measured and compared for PZT films processed from two sol-gel precursor systems. A remanent polarization, Pr, of 7.5 μC cm−2, coercive field, Ec, of 18.7 kV cm−1, dielectric constant, εr, of 739, and loss value, tan(δ), of 0.04 were measured for PZT film post-annealed at 700 °C.