Effects of substrate-controlled-orientation on the electrical performance of sputtered BaTiO3 thin films

Abstract

In this work, the relationships between bottom electrode/substrate configuration, crystalline microstructure, and electrical performances of BaTiO3 (BTO) thin films were investigated. The films were fabricated via RF magnetron sputtering on (Sr0.5La0.5)CoO3 (LSCO) buffered (110)-, (111)-SrTiO3 (STO) and SrRuO3 (SRO) buffered (110)-, (111)-MgO (MGO) substrates. The x-ray diffractometer results show that the LSCO/STO substrate resulted in films with high-quality epitaxial orientation, whereas the SRO/MGO substrate resulted in films having a strong (110) texture. The electrode/substrate configurations were designed to control the crystalline microstructure, which in turn affects the electrical performances of the films. The electrical performances were studied by employing a metal/ferroelectric/metal model. The J-V characteristics show obvious asymmetry with bias, which is mainly due to the varying transport state of oxygen vacancies. BTO films grown on LSCO/STO substrates exhibit large dielectric frequency dispersion, while those grown on SRO/MGO substrates display a nearly frequency independent response. All electrical parameters of these films were strongly affected by the polarization-tilting angle and the preferred orientation degree. Epitaxial and textured (110)-oriented films show higher permittivity but lower loss tangent, free-carrier concentration, built-in voltage, and leakage current density as compared to the epitaxial (111)-oriented film.