Superior ferroelectric properties and fatigue resistance in Tb modified (BaCa)(ZrTi)O3 film grown on SrTiO3 prepared by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract The ferroelectric properties and fatigue resistance of 47(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3–53Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3(BCZT) film can be enhanced by Tb modified and adding SrTiO3(STO) buffer layer using pulsed laser deposition(PLD) method. The 0.4 mol% Tb doped BCZT/STO(0.4Tb-BCZT/STO) film possesses optimal comprehensive electrical properties. Comparing with traditional BCZT film gown on Pt, the residual polarization(Pr), piezoelectric coefficient(d33*), permittivity(er) of 0.4Tb-BCZT/STO film increase from 3.6 to 9.0 μC/cm2, 52 to 75 pm/V, 880 to 1210 and loss(tanθ) decrease from 0.028 to 0.017(104 Hz), respectively. During a high electric field, the degradation of Pr is only 5.8% and the increase of Ec is about 6.1% in 0.4Tb-BCZT/STO film after 109 switching cycles, which show the excellent fatigue resistance. The improved polarization and fatigue performances of film benefits from the reduced pinning influence with lower defect concentration based on a series of experiments and theoretical simulation. This work demonstrates the potential candidates of lead-free nonvolatile memory micro-devices applied in microelectronic industry.