A novel process for alkoxide-derived PZT thin films with multi-seeding layers

An improved method using molecular-designed metal alkoxide precursors is described for the sol-gel process of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin film. This method involves the insertion of film of perovskite lead titanate (PT) as a seeding layer between each PZT layers, which offers the nucleation sites reducing the activation energy for the crystallization, and leads to highly crystalline PZT film. An intermediate pyrochlore phase occurred in the deposited film by the annealing at around 400°C in air, and then was completely converted to the perovskite phase at a low temperature of 450°C. The relative permittivity of the resulting film annealed at 450°C increased with increasing film thickness. As a result, it reached a value of 346 at 1.8 μm