Electrical properties of Nd-substituted Bi4Ti3O12 thin films fabricated by chemical solution deposition

Nd-substituted Bi4Ti3O12 (BNT) ferroelectric thin films have been fabricated on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si(1 0 0) substrates by chemical solution deposition (CSD). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to identify the crystal structure, the surface and cross-section morphology of the deposited ferroelectric films. After annealing at 700 °C, the Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 and Bi3.54Nd0.46Ti3O12 films are crystallized and exhibit a polycrystalline structure, but however show different preferred orientations. The experimental results show the ferroelectric and dielectric properties of the Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 thin films are better than those of Bi3.54Nd0.46Ti3O12 thin films. Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 thin films show a large remanent polarization (2Pr) of 65.4 μC/cm2 under a maximum applied field of 356 kV/cm and high dielectric constant (εr) of 521 at the frequency of 10 kHz. This work clearly reveals that Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 thin film has the more promising potential application in the non-volatile ferroelectric random access memories and dynamic random access memories.