On the importance of the SrTiO3 template and the electronic contact layer for the integration of phase-pure low hysteretic Pb(Mg0.33Nb0.67)O3-PbTiO3 layers with Si

Abstract

The rapid advent of the piezoelectric microelectromechanical systems (PiezoMEMS) field has created a tremendous demand for low hysteretic piezoelectric thin films on Si. In this work, we present the integration of epitaxial Pb(Mg0.33Nb0.67)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) thin films with Si to enable device fabrication using state of the art methods. With optimized buffer layers and electronic contacts, high-quality low hysteretic PMN-PT thin films are integrated with Si, which is a significant stride towards employing PMN-PT thin film for PiezoMEMS devices. It is found that the processing of the necessary SrTiO3 buffer layer is crucial to achieve the growth of phase-pure perovskite PMN-PT layers on Si. Furthermore, we propose the engineering of the electronic contact for the PMN-PT-on-Si capacitors to obtain low hysteretic polarization and displacement responses.