Study of acetic acid addition on properties of PZT films prepared by sol–gel method

In order to improve the property of PZT, a method of adding acetic acid was proposed in this paper, and the effects of acetic acid addition on the crystal orientation, microstructures, leakage current, dielectric and ferroelectric properties of PZT thin films were investigated. The Pb1.1(Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3 (1 µm) thin film samples with acetic acid were prepared on Pt(111)/Ti/SiO2/Si(100) substrate by sol–gel method. The addition of acetic acid (36%) in the 0.025 mol PZT solution are 0 ml, 10 ml, 15 ml, 20 ml, respectively. All samples obtained dense columnar perovskite structures. X ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that the addition of 15 ml acetic acid made the orientation of the (110) crystals the highest, and the maximum leakage current decreased from 1.19 × 10−9 to 9.08 × 10−10 A. The relative dielectric constant reached 1034 at 100 Hz, which was 10% higher than the PZT film without acetic acid. For ferroelectric properties, the + Pr increased from 14.1 to 17.0 µC/cm2, and the −Pr increased from 8.1 to 11.9 µC/cm2.