Abstract
Lead titanate thin films have been deposited by spin coating on stainless steel substrate using the precursor sol, which was synthesized from acetylacetone chelating with titanium isopropoxide and ethylene glycol as a solvent, in the sol–gel process. The influence of film thickness, pyrolysis temperature, and heating rate on (the formation of thin films) microstructure and morphology of thin films have been systematically investigated. The phase purity, particle size, and morphology are studied using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements. It is observed that the preferred oriented thin films could be obtained by pyrolysis of wet films at 150°C and annealed at 600°C at a slow heating rate of 4°C/min. It is also confirmed from X-ray patterns that the tetragonal perovskite structure of the titanate exists without any impurity peaks in the films formed. The TGA/DSC curves of the PT precursor show weight loss of ~7% and two exotherms at 492 and 522°C. They are attributed to the crystallization of tetragonal PbTiO3. SEM shows that the PbTiO3 thin films annealed at 600°C for 1 h crystallized well. The FTIR analysis showed the characteristic absorption bands of Pb–O groups at 663 cm−1 and Ti–oxo groups at 600 cm−1.
Highlights
Devices made from Pb-based ferroelectric thin films work at low voltage and high frequency, as they are compatible with semiconductor-integrated circuit, and possess superior electric properties approaching near bulk values
During the thin film preparation, it was observed that the annealing temperature was higher, and the heterogeneous nucleation and growth of perovskite grain at the interface between the film and the substrate occurred much easier because of a higher thermal energy applied during the nucleation process
From the observation of X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, the full width at half maxima (FWHM) of (0 0 1)/(1 0 0) peaks were found to be broader with the increase in film thickness
Summary
There has been increased interest in lead-based ferroelectric thin films, such as PbTiO3 [PT] Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 [PZT], (PbLa)TiO3 [PLT], and Pb(LaZr)TiO3 [PLZT], for their applications in a variety of piezoelectric device application (White & Turner, 1997), which include high-frequency ferroelectric sonar transducers (Bernstein et al, 1997), elastic surface wave devices (Cicco, Morten, & Prudenziati, 1996), new ultrasonic composite transducers (Cicco, Morten, & Prudenziati, 1997), pyroelectric infrared sensors (Łoziński, Wang, Uusimäki, & Leppävuori, 1998), microelectromechanical system devices (Polla & Schiller, 1995), torque sensors (Morten, De Cicco, & Prudenziati, 1994), and hydrophones (Chan et al, 1999). Vijendra A Chaudhari has completed his PhD in Physics at Dr BAMU, Aurangabad. The paper deals with the sol–gel synthesis and characterization of lead titanate films.
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