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We employed in situ Raman spectroscopy under electric field for (100)/(001)-oriented tetragonal Pb(Ti0.61Zr0.39)O3 films with (001)-volume fraction (VC) of 35%. The increase in VC was revealed above 200 kV/cm, which resulted in the larger remanent polarization. In addition, the application of high enough field also brings a feature, i.e., large reversible change in VC with/without electric field that can quantitatively explain the enhanced piezoelectric response. These demonstrate the usefulness of in situ Raman observation to probe the domain contributions to the electrical and piezoelectric responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors grew (001)- and (001)/(100)-oriented epitaxial PbTiO3 films with various thicknesses on (100)SrTiO3 substrates. They used x-ray diffraction to measure the angles between surface normal [001] of (001)-oriented domains and [100] of (100)-oriented domains. The angles were found to be approximately 3.6° when the film thickness exceeded 1100 nm. This value is consistent with the value obtained by a geometric calculation for strain-free PbTiO3. This result suggests that thick epitaxial PbTiO3 films grown on (100)SrTiO3 substrates have a fully strain-relaxed structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thin films of Bi(Fe1-xScx)O3 (BFSO) system were fabricated on (111)Pt/TiO2/SiO2/(100)Si substrates by chemical solution deposition to improve the electrical resistivity by substituting electrically unstable Fe3+ cations for stable Sc3+ cations. A single phase of perovskite was obtained in the range of x=0–0.30, in which selective replacement of Fe3+ and Sc3+ was confirmed in x=0–0.15 by using Raman measurement. The leakage current density of the BFSO films was reduced by increasing x. A well-saturated polarization–electric field hysteresis loop was obtained for BFSO films with x=0.15, showing remanent polarization of approximately 35 μC/cm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(100)-/(001)-oriented epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) films with various Zr/(Zr + Ti) ratios and film thicknesses were grown on (100)cSrRuO3//(100)SrTiO3 substrates at 600°C by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. Their crystal structure and microstructure consisting of particularly mixed phases with tetragonal and rhombohedral symmetries were investigated in detail. Films with the mixed phases with tetragonal and rhombohedral symmetries were ascertained at a Zr/(Zr + Ti) ratio of around 0.50 at a thickness of more than 200 nm from x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, while no mixed phase region was observed for 50 nm thick film. The relative volume fraction of the tetragonal c domain decreased with increasing film thickness for 2 µm thick films with mixed phases, while the tetragonal a domain and rhombohedral domain increased. These mixed phases were ascertained to have originated from the same cubic PZT grown above Curie temperature from results obtained by temperature-dependent high-resolution XRD reciprocal space mapping. The transmission electron microscopy images clearly revealed that the microstructure of the film gradually changed along the film thickness, despite the fact that the film was very uniform. Tetragonal phases were dominant in the bottom region (near the interface with the substrate) of the film, while rhombohedral phase was dominant in the upper region (near the surface), which was also ascertained by cross-sectional Raman analysis. In addition, the tetragonal a/c domain was wider in the bottom region than that in the upper region of film with mixed phases. These data clearly demonstrate that both the crystal structure and microstructure changed along the film thickness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]