Morphological and electrical investigations of lead zirconium titanate thin films obtained by sol-gel synthesis on indium tin oxide electrodes

In recent years, interest in PbZr0.53Ti0.47O3 (PZT) films has been rapidly increasing due to their technological applications as ferroelectric materials. In the present work, PZT films are obtained by sol-gel synthesis and deposited by spin coating on a transparent conductor substrate, with a perspective application as rectifying layers in asymmetric nematic liquid crystal cells. An extensive investigation is carried out on the effects of different annealing temperatures, with regard to the film texture and to the electric polarization properties, by using low vacuum scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and electrostatic force microscopy. It has been observed that PZT domains self-organize into flower-like dendritic structures with a “rosetta” shape at the early stage of crystallization, occurring for annealing temperatures higher than 600 °C; the dimensions of such structures increase versus the annealing temperature. The ferroelectric properties of the PZT films have been related to th...