Enhancement in nanoscale electrical properties of lead zirconic titanate island fabricated by focused ion beam

Abstract

Lead zirconic titanate (PZT) microscale island (1 μm–100 nm) was fabricated by focused ion beam before its crystallization, followed by the annealing treatment at the crystallization temperature. Local electrical properties were evaluated by piezoresponse force microscopy technique. Compared to the PZT island fabricated after crystallization, the result shows that there is noticeable enhancement in nanoscale electrical properties of PZT island fabricated before crystallization, especially when the island size decreases. Raman spectra and Kelvin force microscopy result both show that there are little degradations on the PZT surface after this amorphous etching process. The mechanism will be discussed in this paper. These results are very beneficial to the development of the ferroelectric film applications in the dynamic random access memory, ferroelectric random access memory, and micro-electro-mechanical system field.