A critical review of physical vapor deposition techniques for the synthesis of ferroelectric thin films

Physical vapor-deposition techniques such as plasma and ion beam sputter deposition and pulsed laser ablation-deposition, which are extensively used for synthesizing single and multicomponent and multilayered thin films, particularly multicomponent oxide ferroelectric thin films, are considered. The optimization of deposition conditions, and thus film composition, microstructure, and properties, requires a good understanding of the basic phenomena involved in ion and laser-solid target interaction and related processes such as sputtering, ablation, transport, and deposition of material onto appropriate substrates. Basic phenomena related to these techniques and their influence on the processing-composition-microstructure-property relationships of ferroelectric thin films are discussed in the context of recent experimental and theoretical work performed by several groups, with the ultimate goal of optimizing the abovementioned deposition techniques and scaling them up for application in the fabrication of ferroelectric thin-film devices