Effect of ion damage on the crystallization of PZT thin films

Abstract

Effects of Ar ion damage prior to the phase transformation from pyrochlore to perovskite structure of PZT thin films have been investigated. As the degree of damage increased by increasing the acceleration voltage in the ion mass doping system, the phase transformation temperature decreased such that the temperature could be lowered down to 550°C when the film was damaged at 15kV for 5 minutes. When the films were damaged prior to the heat treatment, the final grain size of the perovskite thin films became less than 300Å. The microstructure showed the granular type rather than columnar structure after ion damage treatment and annealing. It turned out that relatively high value of the remanent polarization (about 30 μC/cm2) as well as improvement of the fatigue characteristics to a large extent are closely related to the fine grain size of thus obtained PZT films.