Preparation of Thick Pb(Zr, Ti)O3(PZT) Film by Electrostatic Spray Deposition (ESD) for Application in Micro-System Technology

A Pb(Zr, Ti)O 3 (PZT) thick film was prepared by electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) using a sol-gel solution as the precursor. The steady spray, which is suitable for large area and uniform PZT film deposition, can be achieved at an applied electric potential of 4500 volts and solution flow rate of 0.6 ml/h for the 0.4 M sol-gel PZT solution. The use of 100-nm-thick sol-gel PZT as a buffer layer affected the ESD-deposited PZT film's nucleation and growth behavior and enhanced the PZT (100) orientation. By using sol-gel PZT as the intermediate layer to increase the density of the ESD-deposited PZT film, the relative dielectric constant of as high as 960 can be achieved. Our primary results proved that ESD is a promising method for the preparation of thick PZT films with good piezoelectric properties.