Etching characteristics and absence of electrical properties damage of PZT thin films etched before crystallization

The ion beam etching (IBE) process was performed on the amorphous PZT film which is deposited on the LNO coated SiO2/Si substrate, followed by the annealing step at the crystallization temperature. No damaged layer can be observed on the PZT film surface after etching. Compared to the un-etched PZT film, there is no or very little degradation on the dielectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties. The mechanism will be discussed in this paper. These results are very beneficial to the development of the ferroelectric film applications in the DRAM, FERAM and MEMS field. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.