Effect of Fe-doping on the structural, microstructural, optical, and ferroeletric properties of Pb1/2Sr1/2Ti1−xFexO3 oxide prepared by spin coating technique

•Pb1/2Sr1/2Ti1−xFexO3 change short- and medium-range structural.•PSTF films exhibits weak ferroelectric properties.•PSTF films showed a direct allowed optical transition.•The increasing of Fe content leads to a red shifted band gap relative to pure PST.

The influence of Fe content on the structural, microstructural, dielectric, ferroelectric and optical properties was investigated in Pb1/2Sr1/2Ti1−xFexO3 films deposited on Si/SiO2/Ti/Pt and quartz substrates. X-ray diffraction showed that all films presented polycrystalline and single perovskite phases and the change of lattice parameters caused by increasing Fe-doping content replacing Ti4+ ions is very small to be detected by X-ray diffraction technique. Micro-Raman analysis showed the tetragonal nature for both undoped-PSTF and doped-PSTF (1%Fe) films, while both doped-PSTF (5%Fe) and PSTF-10 (10%Fe) films presented a pseudocubic structure. It was noticed that all films exhibited a homogeneous microstructure, compact and crack-free. The remnant polarization in the Fe-doped PSTF films was weaker than that for undoped-PSTF films which was attributed to structural changes and smaller grain size. The increasing of Fe content leads to a red shifted band gap relative to undoped PSTF films due localized levels within the forbidden band of PSTF.