Solution-based process with thermal UV treatment for fabrication of piezoelectric PZT films for an actuator array at temperatures under 450 °C

We report on the fabrication of a low-temperature sol-gel derived lead zirconium titanate (PZT) film and actuator, achieved by introducing a thermal ultraviolet/ozone (UV/O3) treatment. A spin-coated PZT gel film was irradiated with UV light on a heated stage (200 °C) in ambient O3, before crystallization. The thermal UV/O3 treatment created a reducing environment inside the PZT gel film, which inhibited the formation of the pyrochlore phase, leading to the direct formation of the perovskite phase after annealing at 450 °C. The low-temperature processed PZT film exhibited a preferential (111) orientation. The remanent polarization, coercive field, and leakage current of the PZT film obrained using this fabrication technique, were 23.6 μC/cm2, 109.6 kV/cm, and 10−6 A/cm2, respectively. We also fabricated an actuator using the low-temperature processed PZT film. The maximum displacement was approximately 130 nm at 10 V, which was close to the prediction of the simulation results. The proposed process shows great promise for the integration of PZT films with other systems.