Enhanced electrical properties of ferroelectric thin films with electric field induced domain control

(0 0 1) oriented Pb(Zr0.5Ti0.5)O3 (PZT) thin films with high piezoelectric constant were deposited by the electric field-assisted annealing (EFA-A) of alkoxide-derived precursor thin films. So far, selective orientation control of (0 0 1) domain and (1 0 0) domain is very difficult, especially for the chemical solution deposition (CSD). We tried an electric field induced domain control to improve the electrical properties with CSD. An electric field of 10 kV/cm has been applied during an annealing. The high (0 0 1) domain ratio of 75.6% was obtained from the deconvolution of (0 0 2) and (2 0 0) X-ray diffraction peaks. The PZT thin films showed very high piezoelectric constant of 352 pm/V. This shows electric field induced domain control is very effective to enhance the electrical properties of CSD-derived PZT thin films.