Concepedia

Abstract

Lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) thick films on Si substrates were prepared by an arc discharged reactive ion-plating method. To obtain a perovskite structure, an optimum Pb flux control was necessary during the fabrication. At a deposition rate of 5.6 µm/h, a perovskite-phase PZT film could be fabricated, which exhibited a ferroelectric hysteresis curve with a remanent polarization of 29 µC/cm2 and a coercive electric field of 41 V/cm, and a displacement curve with a maximum displacement of 70 nm with a thickness of 1.9 µm. A piezoelectric constant d33=100 pC/N was estimated from an atomic force microscopy (AFM) in the film with a thickness of 4.4 µm. We also fabricated a diaphragm-type film actuator in which a PZT layer was patterned using a stencil mask. This actuator exhibited an inverse butterfly-shaped displacement curve with the maximum displacement of 3 µm.