Preferential Crystal Growth of (100)-Oriented BiFeO3 Films on Si Substrate

Abstract

Bi-based perovskite-type oxide materials such as BiFeO3 (BFO) and the related compounds receive much attention and have been developed actively as important candidates for Pb-free ferroelectric / piezoelectric materials instead of toxic Pb-based perovskite oxide materials. Recently, many researches have been reported for thin films of BFO by various film-deposition techniques for actual application of semiconductive devices, microactuators, etc. In this report, we tried preferential crystal growth of BFO films on semiconductive silicon substrates using uniaxial-(100)-oriented LaNiO3 (LNO) buffer layer. BFO films were fabricated via chemical solution deposition (CSD) technique on platinized silicon wafer [(111)Pt/TiO2/(100)Si] and (100)LNO-coated platinized silicon [(100)LNO/(111)Pt/TiO2/(100)Si] substrates. XRD analysis indicated that the films fabricated on (111)Pt/TiO2/(100)Si substrate consisted of randomly-oriented BFO crystal with lower crystallinity and trace amount of the second Bi2Fe4O9 phase. On the other hand, the films on (100)LNO/(111)Pt/TiO2/(100)Si consisted of uniaxial-(100)-oriented BFO crystal with higher crystallinity. The crystallization temperature these films were 450 and 400°C, respectively. These results suggest that the BFO crystal was grown epitaxially on uniaxial oriented (100)LNO plane which also had perovskite-type crystal structure. Consequently, (100)-oriented BFO films were prepared on Si substrate successfully using (100)LNO buffer layer.