Dresden 2009 – scientific programme

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DF: Fachverband Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 16: Thin Films and Nanostructures III

DF 16.4: Talk

Thursday, March 26, 2009, 15:50–16:10, WIL B321

Impact of high interface density on ferroelectric and structural properties of PbZr_0.2Ti_0.8O₃ / PbZr_0.4Ti_0.6O₃ epitaxial multilayers — •Ludwig Feigl¹, Shijian Zheng², Balaji I. Birajdar¹, Brian J. Rodriguez¹, Yinlian Zhu^1,2, Marin Alexe¹, and Dietrich Hesse¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, D-06120 Halle, Germany — ²Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, 110016 Shenyang, China

Multilayers consisting of the two tetragonal compositions PbZr_0.2Ti_0.8O₃ and PbZr_0.4Ti_0.6O₃ were deposited onto a SrRuO₃ electrode grown on a vicinal (100) SrTiO₃ substrate. It has been shown by extensive structural investigations comprising transmission electron microscopy in conventional and high resolution mode, reciprocal space mapping and piezoresponse force microscopy that with decreasing layer thickness a transition from a-domains confined to individual layers to a-domains propagating through the whole film takes place. This is caused by the formation of a common strain state of all layers which is responsible for the observed enhancement of the electrical properties. These show a maximum in the product of remanent polarization and dielectric constant at a certain density of interfaces. If the interface density becomes too high the lattice distortion accompanying each interface deteriorates the properties of the multilayer structure.