Effects of Annealing Treatment on Fatigue Recovery of Lead Zirconate Titanate Thin Films.

The effects of thermal annealing treatments on fatigue recovery of lead zirconate titanate ferroelectric thin films were investigated. The PZT thin films were prepared on Pt/TiOx/SiO2/Si electrode stacks using a chemical solution deposition method. It was found that the recovery extent of the remnant polarization, coercive electric field and relative dielectric constant depended on the annealing temperature. It was also found that the fatigue endurance of the annealed samples decreased monotonically with increasing fatigue/annealing periods with an annealing temperature of 700°C. Based on the results, a separate passive regions hypothesis for ferroelectric fatigue was proposed, which could explain the results reasonably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]