Influence of the microstructure and of an ION beam etching on the domain propagation in PZT thin films

PbZrTiO 3 (PZT) thin films have been grown by RF-magnetron sputtering and sputter etched by Argon ion beam. The topography of the bombarded material is studied by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), several ferroelectric domains are created by applying a sufficiently high voltage between the tip of the AFM and the Ti/Pt back electrode of the PZT sample, and subsequently imaged using the AFM piezoresponse mode. The influence of the microstructure and of the ionic bombardment on the domain propagation is studied with a nanoscale resolution. It is found that the difference of cristallographic orientation between the samples has little influence on the domain propagation, except at large pulse durations. After etching, it is found that it is still possible to create and image stable domains, with no major influence of the bombardment on the propagation of the ferroelectric domains on comparable samples.