Investigation of the electrical properties of RF sputtered BaTiO3 films grown on various substrates

Abstract Epitaxial BaTiO 3 (BTO) films were deposited on (La 0.5 Sr 0.5 )CoO 3 buffered (001)-oriented YAlO 3 , LaAlO 3 , (La 0.5 Sr 0.5 )(Al 0.5 Ta 0.5 )O 3 , and SrTiO 3 single-crystal substrates using radio-frequency magnetron sputtering. XRD analyses identified that the actual in-plane misfit strains are an order of magnitude less than the unrelaxed lattice misfit (the relaxation of the film/substrate internal stresses). The dielectric properties, polarization and leakage current performances all exhibit slightly the substrate-dependent behavior, which can be mainly attributed to the difference of the film/electrode interface-state parameters. A modified Schottky model was employed to describe the leakage current behaviors. Large space-charge densities calculated with this theory achieved on the order of 10 19  cm −3 for all BTO films, which will significantly contribute to shrinking and tilting of our P-V loops. One possible potential application for ferroelectric films with such characteristic is to provide high storage density of capacitive energy.