Lead zirconate titanate films by rapid thermal processing

Lead zirconate titanate films have been fabricated by a dc sputtering technique with a post deposition rapid thermal annealing treatment at 650 °C for 10 s. The films exhibited good structural, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties compared to conventional furnace-annealed films. The measured dielectric constant and loss tangent at 1 kHz were 900 and 0.04 and the remanent polarization and coercive field values were 10 μC/cm2 and 23 kV/cm, respectively. No significant fatigue in polarization was observed in the films up to 1010 cycles of bipolar stress. The films were optically transparent and showed a linear electro-optic (EO) effect after poling with an EO coefficient of 1.5×10 −11 m/V.